Weekly news round-up: charters, asbestos, and incentives

Posted by Lindsey at 5:02 PM

As parents and students begin gearing up for the new school year, the news this week was dominated by the standard – yet colossal and complicated – contemporary education debates, including charter schools, standardized testing, and incentives.

Mayor Bloomberg kicked off the week by announcing that 18 new charter schools would open in the city this fall. The Times opened a Q and A between readers and James D. Merriman IV, the chief executive of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence. The Sun editorialized in favor of charter schools and private school vouchers. The Daily News wrote about Bay Ridge, Brooklyn parents who oppose a charter school moving into public school buildings.

A Newsday reporter who set out to prove that the Regents exams were easy by taking the U.S. History test unprepared scored a 97 and made his point. Meanwhile, students’ scores on the Advanced Placement tests were released, and the apparently mixed results of pay-for-scores programs vaulted the issue of monetary incentives back into the papers. Employees of the Princeton Review, a high-profile national testing company, made a serious computer error that resulted in 34,000 Florida public school students' private information available to anyone online.

Several disheartening stories involved special education students: allegations of abuse in one city school, asbestos in another, and concerns over special education bus service for the fall. A disabled teacher sued, claiming his epilepsy cost him his job, and a national story about corporal punishment (legal in schools in 21 states but not New York) found that special education students – as well as minority and low income students – disproportionately felt the paddle.

And a couple of journalists used the end of the summer to ask key questions about the future. What will happen to No Child Left Behind, now that Bush is on his way out and a new president is on his way in? Will mayoral control be renewed by the state legislature, especially since Klein and Bloomberg have largely ignored politicians’ education opinions? And where does Obama really stand on education, as supporters of several different ­– and sometimes competing – initiatives claim to be in alignment with the candidate? Education mysteries abound.

News, local and other

Posted by helen at 9:26 AM

It's safe bet that most readers saw yesterday's New York Times magazine cover story, detailing the vast educational experiment underway in New Orleans. In a similar vein, today at noon, Mayor Michael Bloomberg will announce the opening of 18 new charter schools, which are subject to stringent oversight (read, lots of student testing to measure achievement) but not obliged to meet city-mandated curriculum guidelines -- or or bound by union rules, as most charter school faculties aren't UFT members.

Some schools, like the KIPP charters and Excellence Charter School of Bedford Stuyvesant, have great reputations, while others flounder and struggle. We'd love to hear from readers whose kids attend charter schools; are you happy with what and how your kids are learning? What's happening in your child's classroom?

And in the spirit of behind-the-headlines illumination, see this tiny AP item. Teachers in a Texas district get the official ok to pack heat in the classroom -- ostensibly, to discourage school violence. Anyone else get awfully nervous at this kind of news?

Spinning the numbers

Posted by helen at 8:16 AM

Interesting to see how the grad-rate report is presented by local media. Facts are facts, but how they're spun reflects how they're seen.

For starters, the Post notes the upward trend -- but sets the NYC data against even greater apparent progress in long-troubled cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. The Sun describes "an uptick" in state and city scores (and a brief moment of mayoral pique), while the Daily News, incredibly, says "the gap between black and white students closed" -- somehow overlooking the 21 percentage points that separate both groups' graduation rates. The Times' headlines the on-time graduation of "most" city students, for the biggest "hunh?" moment of the morning's news. No argument, 52% is more -- but most? Could a student who scored a 52 on a 100-point exam celebrate getting "most" of the questions right? (Would you accept that, as a parent? The DOE doesn't think twice about calling a 52 a failure on a Regents exam.)

The mind reels, as do the perceptions of readers, decision-makers, and parents citywide.

Grad rates at last: Inching up, with caveats

Posted by helen at 4:40 PM

The State and the City finally released the 2007 high school graduation rate today, and the news is both heartening and discouraging, on more than a few counts.

First, the good news: The overall graduation rate continues to nudge upward from the swamp where it had long languished. For the city as a whole, 52.2% of students who started high school in 2003 (the 2003 cohort) graduated in four years. Another 3.6% graduated in August, via credit recovery and other recuperative programs (mention of which flummoxed the Mayor briefly at a press conference today). If this seems lower than the 60% that was so widely celebrated last year, it is -- in years past, the city included GED-earners in the grad rate, unlike the State's more stringent criteria, which the city now shares.

More Asian and white students continue to earn diplomas than their African-American and Hispanic classmates (bad news) but the gap between the races is narrowing -- slightly (good news, but not that good): Nearly 71% and nearly 69% of Asian and white students graduate in four years; only 43% of Hispanic kids earn their diploma in the same time, as do just over 47% of African-American students. So while it's true that grad rates are rising for African-American and Hispanic kids, it will be a long, long time before the academic playing field is even approximately equal. And demographics notwithstanding, boys continue to lag behind girls in academic achievement. But back on the good-news side, New York leads the state's biggest cities in academic gains. On the bad-news side, the cities still lag well behind the state's overall grad rate of 79.2%.

Less enthusiastic results were posted for English Language Learners, who Chancellor Klein identifies as "our greatest challenge." ELL grad rates dropped in recent years and now have risen three points, to 23.5% for four-year grads and 32.4% for kids who stay in high school for five years (no typo on those stats). Students with disabilities showed slight change in their graduation rate (from 19.4% in 2006 to 19.1% in 2007. Good news, no drop; bad news, scant improvement.

The general tenor of the announcement this afternoon was celebratory but clear-eyed; the Mayor, sporting a spectacular tan, praised all involved, from Klein (also summer-bronzed) and Weingarten down into the academic trenches -- teachers, principals, APs, parents, and of course the students, especially the kids who stick with high school into a fifth or sixth year. "That they didn't do it in four years is immaterial," said the Mayor, who added that staying longer in high school is "demonstrative of someone who wants to take charge of their life," and graciously crediting Jennifer Medina's Times story today as proof.

Still, Bloomberg acknowledged, "despite this heartwarming progress," there's "enormous room for improvement." Notably, 38% of students don't graduate in four years, and nearly 14% drop out. "It's going to be very hard to get them back," he said. (About 10% stay enrolled in high school beyond four years.) The dropout rate contracted slightly since last year, from 15% to 14.7%; we're waiting for follow-up from the DOE on students who were discharged from school -- and don't show up in DOE records as students or dropouts.

Students now in high school can earn one of three diplomas -- local, Regents, or Advanced Regents. About two-thirds of NYC grads earn a Regents diploma, which is good news -- but not so good for the third who get less-rigorous Local credentials, and moot entirely for the kids starting high school next month, who are not eligible to earn the local diploma at all. We've asked the DOE for diploma and grad-rate details on the new small high schools and Career and Technical Education schools, and for more specific demographic and gender information -- and we'll report back whenever we hear more.

Let us know if you have questions; the State published a thick deck of data slides, and we'll post links to specifics if there's interest.


Update: A correction for clarity: The overall state graduation rate cited above, of 79.2%, reflects the grad rate for schools outside the state's five biggest cities, and not the state as a whole. Regrets for any confusion.

GOP spin on NYC schools

Posted by helen at 10:04 AM

John McCain (or his ghostwriter) spun an impressively bold segue from public-school reform to private-school vouchers in this editorial in the Daily News. Touting the Mayor and the Chancellor, along with Rev. Al Sharpton, as visionary ed reformers, McCain cites their efforts as evidence of school failure -- anyone else miss the logic here? -- and promises private- and religious-school vouchers as his vision of public school reform.

Read Sharpton's praise for McCain here, if you're curious.

Even with the spin, the editorial asks a big, legitimate question: Sharpton, Klein et al are at the forefront of the Education Equality Project, which defines education as an essential civil right for all Americans. Barack Obama, whose daughters attend private school, hasn't yet weighed in. As the AFT-endorsed candidate, we'd welcome his views.

Bloomberg, Klein to school House panel

Posted by helen at 9:45 AM

Quiet week in NYC? Head down to D.C.: Tomorrow morning, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein will address a House panel on progress in urban education, along with D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Klein protegee D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and public school leaders from Chicago and Atlanta.

We bet we'll hear about test score gains and closing the achievement gap -- but we doubt the conversation will include troubling nuances, like the fact that race-based gaps between brighter kids widen over time, even as they narrow for kids with lower skills. And we bet we won't hear the nitty-gritty on why level 4 test scores have dropped for middle schoolers this year: Will anyone ask about the price bright students pay in a system so focused on raising low-level student skills?

We'll likely hear about charter schools and merit pay, about leadership pipelines and increasing accountability. We'll hear about rising grad rates -- but bet the numbers they cite will be based on old data, as the newly calibrated scores are yet to be made public.

Will we learn anything new? We doubt it, but we'd love to be wrong. As it stands now, though, our bet is on celebration over substance, and photo-ops over hard questions.

Those ads

Posted by helen at 10:46 AM

Anyone else feel in the eye of a swirling PR-storm? The Fund for Public Schools (the private-money gathering arm of the DOE) has sponsored a swath of glossy ads showcasing progress in the public schools that would make the Mad Ave mavens plenty proud. See the ads here -- but if you watched a half-hour or more of TV last night, we're sure you've seen the new, test-score-touting ad already.

Knickerbocker SKD is the agency behind the campaign, which has been underway since 2007; according to the Fund for Public Schools, the production and media buy for this wave cost about $1 million. Beginners, they're not: Also on their client list are Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau and real-estate megadeveloper Forest City Ratner.

The Fund, first headed by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, raises private millions for education reform. But as Kathryn S. Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, put it in 2005, the Mayor's own philanthropy is a powerful model. "He had a lot of chits to call in." And call he did.

Rangel wrangles GE bucks for Harlem middle-school math and science

Posted by helen at 2:03 PM

Ten Harlem middle schools will get new math and science programs this fall, thanks to a $17.9 million, five-year grant from the General Electric Foundation, announced just this afternoon by a sun-drenched Mayor Bloomberg, flanked by CEO of GE Jeffrey Immelt, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and Harlem's own Charlie Rangel, House Ways and Means Committee Chair and undisputed king of 125th Street.


The largest corporate grant ever awarded to city schools, the DOE money is the lion's share of a $29-million package that directs GE funds to Teachers College, Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Childrens' Zone, the Council for Opportunities in Education and College for Every Student, in that corporation's ongoing effort to develop math, science and engineering talent. Klein said that participating public schools have yet to be identified, although a Teacher's College press-release named PS 200 and PS/IS 180 as part of the program.

We don't yet know how the money will be spent or the programs administered, but Klein did mention that a portion of the grant might be used to "reconfigure" middle schools (translation: break them up and make them smaller). The mayor and the chancellor have reminded us often over the past week that middle schools remain their biggest challenge for reform, and they heralded this latest cash flow as a boost to their invigorated efforts. We're curious, however, why other parts of the city, with similarly acute needs for strong math and science education, aren't part of the powerhouse's largesse.

A toast to test scores

Posted by Lindsey at 5:15 PM

It was a love-fest today at PS 178 for New York City’s educational leadership. Ongoing battles over budget cuts were tabled (momentarily) as the Mayor, Chancellor Joel Klein, UFT president Randi Weingarten and CSA rep Ernie Logan lauded city children’s performance on the state ELA and Math tests, which were announced today, and are posted on line here. The credit for the steadily rising test scores (with still-glaring gaps between grade 4 and grade 8 achievement), was generously shared as speakers thanked each other, the children, the parents, the teachers and, of course, themselves.

Each speaker in turn emphasized how much work educational reformers in New York City have yet to accomplish.

“It’s a wonderful day for New York,” the Mayor said, before adding this caveat: “If history looks back and says, 'this is a high point,' shame on us.”

Weekly news round-up: Arabic classes, laxative cakes and Klein's sweet dreams

Posted by Lindsey at 1:39 PM

Too busy worrying if you still have a job, your fifth grader got into middle school or the commute to Manhattan for a G&T program is plausible to read the paper? Don’t worry - we’ve flipped through the pages for you. Welcome to the first installment of our education and school news round-up. Look for it every Friday!

This week, while Margaret Spellings, Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg were in Disney World speaking at Jeb Bush’s national education reform summit, a paroled felon ran from the cops ran straight into a Brooklyn elementary school, brandishing his loaded handgun. Luckily, everyone at PS 108 was okay, but some older Brooklyn students found themselves behind bars after serving a laxative laced cake that left two teachers hospitalized.

While in the Magic Kingdom, Chancellor Klein wished upon a star for the ability to certify teachers and principals without a university. The College Board might wish that the new SAT had proven to be a better indicator of college success; they sure tried to spin their study results that way. At least veterans had one dream come true when Congress greatly expanded their educational grants and permitted the transfer of aid to family members.

In Albany, Gov. Paterson has successfully pushed through legislation that will push sex offenders out of the classroom, but he has been less successful in convincing fellow lawmakers to cap local school property taxes, although a poll shows that 74 percent of voters support the cap.

But in "America's first suburb," the property tax debate has been overshadowed. Town officials in Levittown complain of psychological damage to 8^th graders, who came across their town name as an answer choice on the state social studies exam and were so upset to see their community associated with Hoovervilles and tenements that they were unable to complete their tests. A high school in Massachusetts, however, has a real problem. Some students supposedly made a pact to become pregnant, and now 17 girls under 17 years-old are expecting.

Wendy Kopp and Richard Barth, the Upper West Side-based education power-couple who is devoted to closing the achievement gap through Teach for America and the KIPP charter school network, might wonder why European countries are looking to the US schools as a model of desegregation. Local columnists, meanwhile, muse on Obama’s father’s day speech, and the effect of home life on school achievement.

All New York public school students might soon learn more about how to be nice to each other, and a few New York private school students will study Arabic next year. Language skills, however, continue to bar many immigrants from accessing the city’s childcare offerings.

And, of course, the topics covered in our blog were also covered in the papers: flaws in the new G&T admissions policy, which left the program even less diverse than in years past; the Robin Hood effect of No Child Left Behind, which has potentially created a boost in low-performing students scores while stagnating high performing students’ academic growth; the middle school placement mess; and the interview with Chancellor Klein, which focuses on Brooklyn schools but is illuminating in general.

Thoughts? Reactions? Opinions?

UPDATE (6/25/08): The story about the teen pregnancy pact has gotten a lot of follow-up ink. Was it a pact or not? Regardless, there are still 17 pregnant teenagers in one high school, several of whom have confirmed that their pregnancy was intentional.