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.

Cash for school: The D.C. variation

Posted by helen at 10:17 AM

Looks like Washington, D.C. schools head Michelle Rhee is borrowing another page from her mentor's playbook; see this story for her proposal, modeled on Klein's prototype, that students at 14 District middle schools earn up to $200 a month for steady attendance.

That's some kind of walking-around money for young teens and forces some tough questions: What do we teach kids when we pay them to show up? And where's the equity in rewarding some students but not others? What of the kids in schools who aren't getting paid to come to school -- do they strike for their 'due wages'? Badger their parents for allowances that match the city's incentive pay? The mind boggles.

Tone-deaf at the DOE: a brief history of middle school reform

Posted by Philissa at 9:25 PM

First, the City Council recommends realistic, affordable, broadly supported middle school reforms. Then, after earmarking only $5 million to fund a few of the reforms, the DOE rolls out a punitive policy to retain more 8th graders. The mayor then cuts funds that go to support the very programs it says will prevent retentions. Next, the day after a major press conference by a coalition of parents and advocates upset about the retention policy and the budget cuts, the DOE announces an initiative to "re-brand achievement" using cell phones. And finally, in its press release, the DOE notes that cell phones, include those that promote learning, continue to be prohibited in schools.

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

DOE-sanctioned cell phones may be on their way to schools

Posted by Philissa at 10:22 AM

Is this just a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing? Or is there something else going on in the DOE's chief equality officer's plan to reward high-performing students with free cell phones -- perhaps a conspiracy by the DOE to prop up Motorola?

The DOE's chief equality officer, Roland Fryer, told an audience at Harvard (where he is a professor) last month that he hopes to give high-performing students cell phones -- but they won't be able to use during school hours, when cell phones are banned. Good grades and behavior would mean more cell phone minutes, Fryer said, and the phones won't cost the city any money, reports the Times today. The DOE's press office says the department is considering the idea, but "this is a proposal that neither the mayor nor the chancellor has signed off on," according to the Times article. They had better hurry -- Fryer is hoping to get the first Motorola phones, possibly with Jay-Z-penned ringtones, to kids as early as this month. The Times article doesn't address where kids will be able to stash their phones during school hours.

Student Thought: So, what do STUDENTS think about "Cash for Kids"?

Posted by Seth Pearce at 8:28 PM

It's been months since the Bloomberg-Klein Complex introduced Opportunity NYC, a program that would pay students for academic achievement, specifically: standardized test scores. This story has been covered by all the major media outlets, the vast sea of NYC edublogs and even the Colbert Report. Still, no one has asked: "What do real life students think about 'Cash for Kids'?" At Monday's NYC Student Union meeting, students voted unanimously in disapproval of the program. Here are some student opinions from the press release:

"It insults hard-working, low- income students by conveying the message that they could not possibly value education in itself and must need some sort of incentive in order to perform better in school." -- Laura Johnson, 17

"A student that tries to earn the money but barely misses the cut off score to earn the money will only become frustrated and give up." -- Hasanur Rahman, 16

"[Opportunity NYC] propagates the test prep culture and detracts from other important aspects of education." -- Shauna Fitzgerald, 15

"The cash being used in this program could better be used to solve citywide problems affecting all students like class size and school resources." -- Ben Shanahan, 15

I tend to trust the opinion of my peers and was one of the students who eventually voted for the resolution disapproving of the program. Still, I personally believe there might be some benefits to the program:

• As my friend and fellow Student Union member Ashu Kapoor said: “It's nice to know that the city is coming up with new and creative ways to help New York City public school students.”
• A lot of students just don't care about school and this might encourage them to get involved in school. (However, as other students at the meeting noted, that involvement would be temporary and wouldn't bring the longterm results that we need.)
• It just might work.

Unfortunately, "it just might work" is not a good enough rationale for a program on this grand a scale. The DOE needs to come up with incentives for students to get into their education but this program has too many holes in it. Maybe instead of Cash for Kids, the DOE could add money to a college fund to be managed by the city and given to these students once their high achievements have made the dream of a college education more realizable. That would turn this short-term program into one capable of longterm successes.

Check out two great posts on the issue by NYC Student Union members Ben Shanahan and Hasanur Rahman over at the NYC Students Blog.