BREAKING NEWS: Mayor moves to end 8th grade "social promotion"

Posted by Philissa at 1:43 PM

It's been a couple of years since the mayor added another grade to the list of those in which a failing grade on either state test requires a child to go through the holdover process, but in his "State of the City" address today, Mayor Bloomberg announced that next year, 8th grade will join grades 3, 5, and 7 on that list.

The details have yet to be announced -- that must be what the chancellor's 3 p.m. press briefing is for -- but we can expect that 8th grade teachers and middle school principals can plan to spend time this spring reviewing the work of their 1-scoring students, as the automatic review process requires. And this new policy will be sure to cause problems for high schools and summer school planners, who will have to update their rolls based on the results of 8th graders' test scores.

The mayor also noted that the city is planning to step up vocational offerings in the public schools. A task force has been convened to supervise the 2009 launch of programs that will begin in high schools and continue in local colleges. And he also said that this fall, families will be able to log in to the test score monitoring system that principals and teachers already use. Hopefully it's less confusing than the progress reports, which befuddled parents and school officials alike.

The mayor had lots to say about things other than education. You should read the whole address and find out what else he has planned for New Yorkers.

New and improved vocational schools may be on the way

Posted by Philissa at 8:24 AM

In October, Comptroller William Thompson issued a report lamenting the declining status of vocational education. But now with a new head of Career and Technical Education, the DOE may be planning to bulk up vocational school options, the Sun reports. Students in the city's CTE schools and programs post higher Regents scores and graduation rates, despite the fact that CTE schools are not funded as well as other schools. According to the Sun, rumors are swirling that the DOE plans to build and open "model" CTE schools to seize on these strong results.

The DOE's new head of CTE programs, Gregg Betheil, was until recently a senior vice president of the National Academy Foundation, which coordinates vocational programs in a number of NYC schools, including the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism at Erasmus, where every student participates. Betheil also worked as a teacher and technology coordinator at Martin Luther King before it closed; according to a 1998 Village Voice article, he was the "champion" of integrating technology and education and inspired students.

I've liked the vocational schools I've visited. Kids are engaged in their work and generally seem happy to be at school. This feeling was especially prevalent at George Westinghouse High School when I visited this fall. There, as at many larger schools, enrollment has declined in recent years as kids enjoy more high school options. But the DOE has not slammed Westinghouse with "over the counter" transfers, as it has other, non-vocational large schools. I wonder whether this is because of the DOE's bias against vocational education. Let's hope that if that bias is truly changing — and it should — the DOE doesn't start filling vocational schools with kids who aren't looking for career-based high school programs.

AFC report: DOE not readying special ed kids for life after school

Posted by Philissa at 6:18 PM

A report released today by Advocates for Children takes aim at the DOE's approach to preparing special education students for life after they finish school. The report, titled "Transitioning to Nowhere: An Analysis of the Planning and Provision of Transition Services to Students with Disabilities in New York City," finds that the Individualized Education Plans of the more than 13,000 students with disabilities who leave the city's public schools every year don't always address how the students will begin to live and work independently.

AFC reviewed IEPs for more than 250 transition-age kids (transition begins at 15 and ends at 21, when kids are no longer eligible for public education) and found that 26 percent had no evidence of any transition planning at all. In addition, AFC found that students were involved in crafting their own plans only 30 percent of the time, and parents were involved only 70 percent of the time. Community organizations and outside agencies, who are required by law to be a part of the transition planning process, were used in only 4 percent of the IEPs reviewed. The DOE agrees that it needs to work on complying with IEP requirements in general.

AFC recommends that the DOE actually start planning kids' transitions when they're 15 and reevaluating the plans yearly to make sure kids are making clear progress toward measurable goals, something that often isn't done for kids in special education. The report also calls for better tracking of what students do once they leave public school and for better vocational training programs to prepare kids to work once they've transitioned out of school. Following these recommendations would make a world of difference for kids with special needs, but better tracking efforts and improved vocational offerings would also be terrific for kids in general education.

Report: Vocational schools funding lagging

Posted by Philissa at 11:38 AM

At the request of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, the city's Independent Budget Office took a look at the state of the city's vocational schools -- and found that despite receiving lower per-pupil funding than "general academic schools," vocational schools actually graduate their students at higher rates. The IBO notes correctly that vocational schools have been largely under the radar in the last few years, as the DOE's ongoing reorganizations have focused squarely on improving test scores, not alternate paths to post-graduation success.

The report also points out that while the DOE's new Fair Student Funding formula assigns extra weight for students in vocational programs, the number of seats in vocational programs may be threatened by local and federal accountability programs. More than half of all vocational schools in the city are considered failing according to No Child Left Behind, and the DOE seems eager to restructure these failing schools, as it has with Harry Van Arsdale High School, which closed this year. The smalls schools now in the Van Arsdale building do not offer vocational instruction.