New York State’s student data tracking system lacks several key elements needed to make it effective, according to a report released today.
The elements New York lacks, according to the report by the Data Quality Campaign:
transcript-level information on what courses students take and how they fare; information about which students take tests [...]The New York State Education Department is failing to ensure that Regents tests are properly scored, according to an audit published today by the state comptroller’s office.
The exams are given to high school students, who have to pass five in different subject areas in order to receive a Regents diploma. [...]
Slightly more than a dozen schools saw their budgets take a hit as a result of Chancellor Joel Klein’s hiring ultimatum.
In early September, Klein sent an email to principals warning that if they didn’t fill their vacancies by October 30, the money would be taken out of their budgets [...]
A debate is brewing over in the community section about how the Department of Education assigns progress report grades to high schools.
On Wednesday, Teachers College professor and regular GothamSchools contributor Aaron Pallas critiqued the DOE’s methodology for producing the high school grades, which were released earlier this week. [...]
In a post on this page earlier this week, “Comparing Small Apples to Large Apples,” Teachers College Professor Aaron Pallas raised several important issues with respect to New York City’s high school progress reports. A frank dialogue about the strengths and weaknesses of our accountability system is important as [...]
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced today that it will invest a total of $335 million into teacher effectiveness initiatives. The vast majority of those funds, $290 million, are headed to three school districts — Pittsburgh, Memphis and Hillsborough County, Florida — and a consortium of Los Angeles charter [...]
Responding to protests that it was breaking the new mayoral control law, the Department of Education will hold a public hearing before extending PAVE Academy Charter School’s stay inside a district-owned building.
The law passed this summer requires the DOE to issue an “educational impact statement” and hold a public hearing [...]
As schools await news about midyear budget cuts, the Department of Education gave out $5 million in bonuses to high school principals and teachers today.
The $5 million, which is going to teachers and administrators at high schools with good progress report grades, is $3 million less than what was awarded last [...]
Parents and students rallied outside P.S. 20 to protest plans that would require them to share space with a growing charter school.
Parents at Lower East Side [...]
I’m not sure how much credibility the Progress Reports at the heart of the NYC Department of Education’s accountability system have left. The elementary and middle school Reports issued earlier this fall were ridiculed for their inability to distinguish one school from another, since 97% of the school’s received A’s [...]
Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew is calling for the power to declare a deadlock in the union’s contract negotiations with the city.
At a meeting of the United Federation of Teachers’ delegate assembly, Mulgrew asked members to vote and grant him the authority to call an impasse in negotiations, setting things [...]
Days after the deadline for the city’s Department of Education to send class size data to the City Council, the department is giving itself a new deadline for the numbers’ release.
A spokesman for the DOE, Will Havemann, said department officials met with staff members of the City Council’s Education Committee [...]
The state education department needs to regulate how it spends its stimulus money more thoroughly, according to an audit released last week by the U.S. Department of Education.
The report, prepared by the USDOE’s Office of Inspector General in a round of “initial” audits of four large states, calls into [...]
At this point in the Mayor’s remaking of our school system, claims of dramatic academic gains seem built on sand.
Analyses prepared for Assemblyman James Brennan by legislative aide Shawn Campbell demonstrate that the Bloomberg administration grossly overstates the impact that the reforms have had on New York City’s student [...]
Parents at district schools on the Lower East Side that may be forced to share space with an expanding charter school are telling the DOE to look elsewhere.
Girls Prep Charter School has requested building space from the DOE in order to expand its middle school program, which launched this [...]
Former Gates Foundation education director Tom Vander Ark is behind one charter school’s application to open in New York City next year.
For years, Vander Ark shaped the educational giving for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, overseeing grants the organization gave to cities that agreed to build small high schools. [...]
You may not think ravioli is worth discussing, but the Panel for Educational Policy debated it in some detail last Thursday at its November meeting, held at PS 128 in Queens. Apparently there’s a need for higher-quality ravioli. In fact, the PEP voted to increase spending on ravioli by 40 [...]
New York State gave more extra time and other accommodations to fourth grade students on the national math exam than any other state in the nation.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, shows that in 2009, New York State gave accommodations to 89 percent [...]
Did you see that the state wants to evaluate teacher training programs by their graduates’ students’ test scores? Of course, the usual sources think that this is a great idea.
Did you see Michael McCurdy’s post this week in the Community section on what a kindergarten report card [...]
The New York State Board of Regents wants to certify new teachers based on their students’ academic achievement in their first two years of teaching, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Education Commissioner David Steiner announced today.
The proposal came as part of a plan to overhaul the way teachers are trained [...]
Last week our child’s G&T kindergarten class at PS 33 Chelsea Prep held parent-teacher conferences. Our conference went well though it was short — just 10 minutes — so the teacher could meet with every child’s parents. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a detailed report card for our child.
Below [...]
Debuting the latest round of progress reports for the city’s high schools, the Department of Education awarded 75 percent of schools A’s and B’s, a slight decrease from last year.
That number reflects a rise in the percentage of high schools that were given A grades this year, and a decrease [...]
Hoping to bring a diverse mix of students to a new Upper West Side high school, parents and neighborhood activists are jumping at the chance to write rewrite its admissions rules.
Frank McCourt High School, which will have a writing and communications focus, is highly anticipated by middle and upper-middle [...]
Students from several high schools were joined by City Councilman Robert Jackson for a protest of the city’s recent ban on bake sales during the school day. Jackson, who chairs the Council’s education committee, signed the students’ petition and then partook of a few [...]
In Horace’s Compromise, Ted Sizer problematizes* our understanding of what constitutes a good high school. He questions how much learning is really going on in our good schools (i.e. our suburban schools that send kids to fancy colleges). The compromise the title refers to is the deal between students and [...]
At Francis Lewis High School, we want to help our sick friend and the Department of Education has offered us a deal. They’ll let us give him our sick days under these terms — buy one, pay for two.
Our colleague is suffering from a nasty reoccurrence of cancer that requires [...]
On the last day of work for over 500 school aides, Chancellor Joel Klein delivered a speech at the aides’ union headquarters that made no mention of the layoffs.
Speaking at District Council 37’s Quality of Work Life Employee Recognition Ceremony this morning, Klein said that “this [...]
Brushing aside criticism that current state laws could jeopardize New York’s chances at Race to the Top Funds, state officials say they will enter the contest in round one.
On Monday, the State Education Department will release a comprehensive plan to overhaul teacher training, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch [...]
Tomorrow is the last day of work for 500 school aides whose jobs have been in limbo since last summer. So it seems pretty bold for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to appear at the annual “Quality of Work Life Ceremony” held by DC 37, the aides’ union.
But that’s exactly [...]
Progress reports for the city’s roughly 500 high schools are slated to be released this month, but grades for two Bronx schools will not be among them.
One is Herbert H. Lehman High School, where executive principal Janet Saraceno is under investigation for grade tampering, as I reported last month. [...]
A few years ago, the New York State lottery’s slogan was “Hey, you never know.” In its original formulation, the slogan sought to motivate New Yorkers to play the lottery, a game of chance, on the grounds that you never know unless you play if you are a winner. But [...]
The U.S. Department of Education released final guidelines for its $4.3 billion Race to the Top grant program this evening, leaving a provision that could ban New York State from applying for the funds still intact.
States that bar districts from using test scores to evaluate teachers and principals are [...]
To occupy myself on a couple of long airplane rides I took this week, I decided to check out what “urban school reform” meant in a different time and a different place: Chicago, fifteen years ago.
Before Ira Glass was the host of the nationally-known radio and television documentary series This [...]
Something interesting happened at the Harlem Children’s Zone conference yesterday: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan paid tribute (kind of) to one of his biggest critics.
Arguing that we can’t wait to improve schools until we fix poverty, Duncan quoted New York University education historian Diane Ravitch.
“Historian Diane Ravitch got it right [...]
The city has agreed to add over 5,000 new classroom seats to its five-year school capital plan at the urging of City Council members.
The proposed amendment, which Mayor Bloomberg has agreed to but will not be finalized for months, increases the number of recommended new elementary and middle school seats [...]
Principal wannabes hoping to open up new city high schools got marching orders from city officials last night: Try to focus on students still learning English or vocational programs.
The advice came at a meeting held by the Office of Portfolio Planning, where more than a dozen people stood before an [...]
Jeffrey Paulino, 17, said he had been assaulted by a school safety agent at his Bronx high school.
Rallying before a City Council hearing today on a more than year-old school safety proposal, advocates renewed their call for a law that would force the city [...]
Burned by Albany funding cuts, charter school advocates are turning to a political base that they’ve long left untapped: parents.
In mid-October, a dozen charter school administrators gathered in a conference room at the Times Square Marriott for a seminar on the role of parents in charter school advocacy. Kenneth Peterson, [...]
A banking error led to thousands of teachers union retirees having money withdrawn from their pensions last night without their knowledge.
According to United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew, the Bank of New York Mellon deposited money in over 60,000 retired teachers’ accounts and then overnight and without explanation, withdrew [...]
The city will pay $55,000 to a Queens high school student who alleged that he was abused by a school safety agent.
The family of Stephen Cruz, a senior at Robert F. Kennedy High School in Flushing, Queens, sued the city a year ago after a school safety agent, Daniel [...]
Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch yesterday called on city charter school operators to move away from elementary education and take on the problems of fixing large failing high schools.
Speaking at Hunter College, Tisch said that charter schools have benefited from being the political “darlings” of the city and state, [...]
Since Michael Bloomberg first became mayor and appointed Chancellor Joel Klein, new principals have been assigned to scores of schools in New York and considerable responsibility has been placed in their hands. Today, the majority of principals in the city have less than five years experience, and many have less [...]
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein congratulated Department of Education staff this morning, saying their work in the public schools contributed to the re-election of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“Mayor Bloomberg’s continuity of leadership has led to historic achievement gains and what I hope is a permanent culture shift — creating a school system [...]
Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered a victory speech last night promising, among other things, that the city’s schools would see even more changes in his third term.
“If you think you’ve seen progress over the last eight years, I’ve got news for you, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” the mayor whooped, his [...]
Another member of the truth squad is leaving the Department of Education: deputy press secretary Andrew Jacob departed the press office this week after four years there. Regular readers of this site will recognize Jacob from his comments on data, testing, progress reports and school enrollment. We expect to [...]
Mayor Michael Bloomberg won re-election last night by slightly more than 50,000 votes, beating opponent William Thompson by a narrow margin in an election with one of the lowest turn-outs in the city’s recent history, the New York Times reported this morning. The Times also has an interesting [...]
Mayor Bloomberg might be guaranteed four more years in office, but that doesn’t mean Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is, David Bloomfield writes in the community section.
Who might replace Klein if he leaves Tweed? Bloomfield highlights several possibilities, including Chief Schools Officer Eric Nadelstern and New Visions for Public Schools [...]
With the mayoral election decided, it is time to speculate on Joel Klein’s successor. Yes, even with Mayor Bloomberg’s victory, the current Chancellor will soon be history.
This prediction probably assures Klein’s job into the next century (with serially-extended term limits and a hefty mayoral investment in cryogenics, it could happen!) [...]
Mona Davids and her daughter, a sixth grade student at Equality Charter School in Co-op City. (Photo courtesy of Mona Davids.)
A Bronx parent who went from charter school foe to cheerleader in [...]
A two-year project to study what makes a teacher good or bad is taking root in some of the city’s schools after struggling to bring teachers on board.
The United Federation of Teachers and the city’s Department of Education announced in September that they had joined forces to promote a [...]
Is there anything that gets people’s dander up faster these days than comparisons of charter schools and traditional public schools? On Thursday, reporter Meredith Kolodner filed a story in the Daily News on the relative performance of charter schools and what the NYC Department of Education calls “district” schools. [...]
On the night of his primary election victory, city comptroller candidate John Liu stood in the city’s teacher union headquarters and thanked the United Federation of Teachers for delivering his win. In the mayoral race, by contrast, the UFT chose to sit on the sidelines and not endorse the [...]
I wrote the column below, which originally appeared in the Oct. 15 Queens Chronicle, together with Leslie O’ Grady, the co-president of the PTA at Francis Lewis. Because NYC parents and teachers share common interests, we felt it would make a strong statement if we showed our alliance on the [...]
Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew dismissed proposed legislation that would overhaul New York State’s teacher tenure and charter cap laws.
Mulgrew criticized Assemblyman Sam Hoyt’s bill in an interview with GothamSchools on Saturday, after delivering an address to approximately 3,000 parents assembled for the United Federation of Teachers’ annual parent [...]
Last Thursday I participated in the Bright Kids NYC parent information session about OLSAT test prep and general information about the NYC gifted and talented program. Bright Kids NYC is a program that prepares children in pre-K through second grade to take standardized tests.
I sat on the G&T panel and [...]
Down in DC yesterday, Chancellor Michelle Rhee faced sharp questioning from the D.C. Council about her office’s handling of hirings and layoffs of teachers and other staff members over the past several months. The DC Public Schools hired 934 teachers during the spring and summer, with an average age of [...]
Department of Education officials are tamping down expectations before next month’s release of the annual high school report cards.
Testifying at a hearing before the City Council’s Education Committee, the DOE’s chief accountability officer Shael Polakow-Suransky said today that the reports will not show the preponderance of A’s that dominated the [...]
If you’re close to a radio (or an internet connection) this weekend, be sure to tune to WNYC for a look at why otherwise strong suburban schools fail minority students. The hour-long documentary is produced by reporter Nancy Solomon and focuses on a school that’s close to home — [...]
Much of the attention paid to Assemblyman Sam Hoyt’s proposed changes to state education law has focused on its immediate repeal of the charter school cap. But the legislation, introduced in both houses of the state legislature yesterday, seeks much broader changes.
Hoyt told GothamSchools that his proposed law is [...]
Click here to view Lehman transcripts and school records. Multimedia feature by Maura Walz.
The Bloomberg administration will investigate the whistleblowing teachers at Herbert Lehman High School who are accusing the school’s principal Janet Saraceno of tampering with students’ grades.
The teachers approached GothamSchools with students’ transcripts [...]
Mayor Bloomberg and Comptroller William Thompson both want to see arts thrive in the schools but have different strategies about how to make that happen, according to their mayoral campaigns’ responses to questionnaires from the Center for Arts Education.
In its response, the Bloomberg campaign explains why city schools [...]
What is the appropriate role for parents in New York City’s public school system? Parents often feel intimidated or marginalized by those in charge of their children’s education. Educators (and many students!) are oppressed by parents’ disinterest and over-interest. Politicians and policymakers, forever straddling the divide, have created myriad structure [...]
Anna Phillips, Maura Walz, Philissa Cramer, Aaron Pallas, Arthur Goldstein, Michael McCurdy, David Bloomfield, Alexander Hoffman, Elizabeth Green, Jason Levy, Ken Hirsh, Shael Polakow-Suransky, Thomas Carroll, Pedro Noguera
