“Many New York City students would like to have someone to whom they can turn,” but their schools don’t provide mental health services, writes a high school student in an article first published in New Youth Connections and reprinted by the Gotham Gazette. The author, April Daley, writes that kids might be more likely to seek out help if it’s available at their schools, but many schools don’t have on-campus health centers and even those that do don’t always have staff members trained in mental health issues.Daley also notes that City Council member Gale Brewer and others pressed this year for funding for school health centers and mental health professionals for every school. They were not successful but plan to try again next year.Does your school have a counselor on staff? What can kids do if they feel, as Daley says is common, like they “need someone to talk to”?

Happy with PS 8, their neighborhood school, parents in Brooklyn Heights are hoping to get a middle school just for themselves, the Times reported in the City section yesterday.

Last month the real estate site Curbed reported that Two Trees development company was using the promise of a 300-seat neighborhood school to convince DUMBO residents to support the controversial 20-story residential tower it’s planning to build in the area. Curbed commenters called the plan a ploy to get support for a project that doesn’t fit into the neighborhood; one wrote, “With 8,000 new people moving into the neighborhood we will need new public schools. But to basically claim we can only get a school if we agree to this proposed monstrosity sounds like blackmail to me.”

The Times article doesn’t make it sound like the DUMBO school is a done deal at all — a DOE spokeswoman said District 15, home to PS 8, has more middle school seats than students. But if the district does get a new middle school, it might not be the only option tailored to serve middle-class families opting into secondary public education in the city for the first time. Over in Park Slope, parents have proposed a charter middle school to open in the fall of 2008.

A new study on New York charter schools provides compelling evidence that charter school students see greater test score gains than they would have in regular public schools. The study, written by Harvard Economics Professor Caroline Hoxby and the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Sonali Murarka, can be downloaded here. (Be forewarned: the study is 81 pages long, but the Executive Summary outlines the main findings in two pages.)

Hoxby and Murarka find that charter schools raise student performance by about .09 standard deviations in math and about .4 standard deviations in reading. We can put those numbers in terms of our standardized tests: On New York’s standardized tests, students receive scores from 1 (not meeting standards) to 4 (exceeding standards); a score of 3 is considered proficient. Charter schools raise math scores about 12% of the distance between a score of 1 and a score of 2, or between 2 and 3, etc. For reading scores the gain is about3.5% of a performance level. Keep in mind that these gains are in addition to whatever gains the students would have made in ordinary public schools.

The findings in Hoxby and Murarka’s study are particularly convincing because they use truly random sampling to compare charter school students and regular students. The notorious challenge in evaluating any educational policy is that it is often extremely difficult to separate the effects of the policy from other correlations. For example, if we tried to compare the effects of private school and public school, we certainly couldn’t just compare standardized test scores of public school students with those of private school students, since the students differ in many ways besides the school they attended. If private school scores were 20% higher than public school scores, for instance, some of that difference might be a result of the differences in education quality, but some of it may come from differences in parental education or socioeconomic status. Even small class size, which many parents and educators have long believed to be good for student achievement, has been very difficult to measure how beneficial small classes are, since students often differ in other ways as well. (If parents who tend to be more concerned for their children’s education tend to demand small classes more often than other students, and if those concerned parents also read to their kids more, for instance, some of the test score differences between small-class and large-class students may come from differences in how much they’re read to at home.)So how can we accurately measure the effects of some educational policy? If students are randomly assigned to either “treatment groups” (those with the effect) and “control groups” (those without), we can compare those two groups without worrying about other factors that might bias the results. Fortunately, New York City charter schools provide an ideal opportunity for such a comparison. In New York, when more students apply for a charter school than can be admitted, they are selected by lottery– a random sample! So Hoxby and Murarka compared the scores of students who were selected for admission with those who entered the lottery but were not selected. This type of comparison is typically considered so convincing that researchers will weigh the results of one good random-comparison study more heavily than any number of other, non-random results.Finally, the study notes that charter school advocates would say the true benefits of charter schools are even greater than the findings in this study suggest. Since one of the supposed benefits of charter schools is that they bring competition for regular schools, advocates would say that charter schools actually improve the quality of education in regular public schools, as those schools are forced to improve to keep students from leaving for charter schools. If that’s true, even the non-charter school students, i.e. the “control group,” would have benefited from the effects of charter schools.

Chancellor Klein’s PR staff deserves as much credit for the City’s recent statistical gains as the administration’s reorganization, according to Sol Stern’s recent column in City Journal. Stern is a scholar at the conservative-tending Manhattan Institute. Stern’s piece gives yet another look at the history of NYC’s education reform, but it goes beyond a simple history to do a bit of investigative journalism, delving into the tactics of Klein’s formidable public relations staff. Stern writes:

The most notorious case of Bloomberg’s data manipulation occurred during the 2005 mayoral race. In May of that year, city hall bused education reporters to P.S. 33, a poor, predominantly minority school in the Bronx, where Bloomberg congratulated the children, their teachers, and Principal Elba Lopez on a miracle: 83 percent of the school’s fourth-graders scored at grade level on the 2005 reading test, compared with only 35.8 percent the previous year—an unheard-of one-year gain of close to 50 percentage points. The school’s score was just 4 percentage points below the average for the state’s richest suburban districts. Further, the mayor announced, the percentage of the city’s fourth-graders passing the state’s reading test had risen by a “record-breaking” 10 points in just one year.If Bloomberg had really introduced accountability into the city’s education system, the implausible P.S. 33 scores would have raised red flags at the education department and perhaps even prompted a fraud referral to the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigations. Instead, the mayor got the political boost that he sought, with front-page headlines hailing the “historic” gains. Almost no commentary pointed out that fourth-grade reading scores rose by almost 10 percentage points in the rest of the state, too, suggesting that the 2005 test might have been easier than the previous year’s.

Though the full article is nearly 4000 words, it’s well worth the time. Thanks to NYC Public School Parents for bringing this one to our attention.

Yesterday, the Times profiled the debate among parents over the popular children’s series Junie B. Jones. Some parents like the 27-book series about a spunky little girl because their reading-resistant kids do, but others ban the books in their homes because the main character uses incorrect grammar. The Times bills this debate as a pedagogical difference, a “pint-size version of the lingering education battle between advocates of phonics, who believe children should be taught proper spelling and grammar from the outset, and those who favor whole language, a literacy method that accepts misspellings and other errors as long as children are engaged in reading and writing.”

But I think the Times might be looking at the wrong culture clash. Instead, I see the books’ publisher’s response to a complaining parent as neatly summing up the debate; Random House said that “books for children don’t always have to be educational to be valuable.”

At schools I’ve visited, I’ve met struggling readers who love Junie B. — they may even identify with her own language struggles, although as scholars point out, her “mistakes” actually correct irregularities in English. But they might just enjoy reading a book that’s fun. Kids spend a great deal of time on cut-and-dry, grammatically correct stories that resemble those they’ll see on standardized tests, and the high stakes of that literary form can’t do much to facilitate a love for reading. Kids deserve to cut loose every once in a while, as adults do, with some light reading. And with the rise of what teacher Barbara Feinberg calls “problem literature” — books about kids confronting very adult misfortunes — there’s value in just reminding kids that stories can make them laugh.

In the article, a sensible parent says she likes reading the books with her son, who enjoys them. “Sure, maybe Junie B. isn’t everyone’s cup of tea,” she said. “But when she does things wrong or says things incorrectly, it provides an opportunity to talk about how things should be.” Like all children’s books, the Junie B. Jones books aren’t meant to stand in for good teachers. But if parents are going to join schools in sucking the fun out of learning, then the books might have to stand in for them.

Today the City Council voted overwhelmingly (46-2) in favor of a law giving students the right to carry cell phones with them during the commute to and from school. Monday’s New York Sun article sums up the issue nicely, and at 1:30 today the proposal went before the full council. Seth Pearce, of the New York City Student Union, weighs in on the vote over at NYC Student Word. He writes, in part:

Today, as a student, I would like to applaud the City Council’s decision to let students have their cell phones during the commute to and from school. I am glad that it has become clear to them that for us students, this is not a matter of convenience but a matter of safety.Plainly, students should not be scared to go to school. Just as our School Safety Agents work every day to keep us safe inside, City policy should protect us outside the walls of the school building. A student should not have to be afraid that in the event of an emergency, they will be isolated and imperiled because they were forced to leave their cell phones at home.

Definitely check out his full post, and keep an eye out for more of Seth’s contributions.

Update: The Staten Island Advance has posted an article on today’s result as well.

Yesterday the city’s comptroller released a lengthy report on the way the DOE tracks services for special education students — and the picture the report paints isn’t pretty. From the conclusions:

DOE is not monitoring, tracking, or documenting the provision of these services in an efficient manner, as shown by documentation that is incomplete, inaccurate, or lacking altogether. … Due to these deficient records, DOE could not demonstrate the extent to which services were provided as prescribed by the students’ Individualized Education Plans (IEPs).

Unsurprisingly, the DOE is contesting the report’s findings; its full rebuttal can be found at the end of the official report.

View Channel 4’s news report online to hear more about the report and see how DOE officials respond. The video features AFC’s director, Kim Sweet, telling parents, “You have to keep maintaining your vigilance to make sure these services are provided.” That advice is unlikely to change even if the DOE does improve its record-keeping.

The New York Times ran an article about an almost identical report in 1994.

This morning the City Council’s Education Committee conducted a hearing on the Department of Education’s proposed plan to spend $228 million in state Contracts for Excellence funds. [See previous posts on this topic.] The hearing was organized by Councilman Robert Jackson, president of the Education Committee. Those testifying included officials from the Department of Education, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, and the teachers’ and administrators’ unions, among others. The hearing was basically an opportunity for council members to get information and, in some cases, to offer their thoughts on the DOE’s plan; the plan does not require a signature of approval from the City Council to move forward.

Jackson directed the meeting, and the most interesting part by far was the first two hours, during which Chancellor Klein and Marcia Lyles outlined the DOE’s plan and argued that it does, in fact, conform to Governor Spitzer’s mandates. (Other testimony, of course, was also pertinent, but was very similar to what we saw during the public hearings on the plan.) Below are what I took to be some of the high points from that segment of the hearing.

• The DOE website has (finally) published a breakdown of Contracts for Excellence funding by district. Although this breakdown does show the amount of money to be spent on each of the five permitted “program areas” in each district (e.g. smaller class sizes, more time on task, etc.), Jackson complained that the document is hardly a comprehensive plan. Instead, it is simply aggregated, by district, individual schools’ planned spending in each area.
• Jackson was frustrated that the DOE had not made substantive changes to its Fair Student Funding plan in response to the Contracts for Excellence requirements; instead, the department claimed that the plan already complied with the required mandates. In response, Klein argued that the same ultimate goals lie at the heart of both the Contracts for Excellence and Children First reforms, and that it is then unsurprising that Children First’s Fair Student Funding didn’t have to change much to comply with the state’s requirements.
• In response to criticisms about the timing of the DOE’s public hearings on the plan, Klein stressed the tight timeline his office faced in organizing the coming year’s budgets, saying that “while, as noted, there is a near perfect symmetry between the substance of our reforms and CFE, we must all acknowledge the practical timing challenges related to fulfilling the mandate of the new legislation this first year.” Klein said next year’s process would be smoother and better advertised in advance.
• As with the rest of the Children First reforms, Klein emphasized the need not only for more money, but for that money to be spent well. He returned to this theme several times, using to respond to Jackson’s skepticism about whether assessments could qualify for increased “time on task” and to Councilman Koppell’s worry that arts education would be neglected in the absence of specific Project Arts allocations.
• Jackson and Klein debated the effectiveness of team teaching as a way to reduce class sizes. According to Klein, the Contracts for Excellence regulations allow adding an additional teacher to a classroom as a means to reduce class size. Although he agreed with Jackson that this measure may not be ideal, he said that, in the absence of more space (which will take time under the new five-year capital improvement plan) it was sometimes the only option.
• With respect to class sizes, a point of contention was whether CTT classes should count as such a reduction. CTT, or Collaborative Team Teaching, places special education students in a class with regular students, and the class is taught by two teachers, one of whom is certified in special ed. The DOE plan includes CTT classes in its class size reduction plans. Geri Palast, of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (one of the organizations that sponsored the lawsuit from which the Contract for Excellence funds resulted) criticized this view of CTT classes, saying that CTT programs targeted classes with special needs and autistic students, not students in large classes, and that the funds were therefore not going toward the “highest needs students” as the CFE law requires.

There was, of course, much more covered than can be summed up in these highlights, but these are the significant points that weren’t already seen during the public hearings. Have more questions about specific testimony or content? Leave a comment and I’ll post some more info.

For the next two weeks, the Daily News will be featuring dispatches from a dozen students from Bronx Lab High School, who are spending a couple of weeks in China as part of the school’s expeditionary learning curriculum. The first post, by 16-year-old Shipnia Bytyqi, is up now. She writes:

Going to Shanghai a year before I move on to college will help me grow as a person and also help me be more open-minded towards various opportunities. If I can go to China at 16, I can do anything, anywhere, anytime.

You can check the Daily News blog for updates on the group’s experience teaching Chinese kids about American culture. And let us know in the comments about other interesting summer adventures schools have organized for their kids.

The DOE has announced its proposed revisions to the discipline code, which it now is subtitling “Bill of Students’ Rights and Responsibilities, K-12.” You can view the code online; proposed changes are highlighted in red. You can comment on the changes until August 8, when the DOE will hold a public hearing on them.

Most of the proposed changes reflect the changing titles of DOE personnel who are responsible for discipline. But there are a couple of substantive changes you might want to pay attention to:

• The code now contains an updated link to the full set of Chancellor’s Regulations online.
• Horseplay is now explicitly excluded from “Level 4″ infractions for younger students.
• “Sexually suggestive” speech and behaviors have been bumped up a level of severity for older kids; they can now result in a year-long superintendent’s suspension.
• And several lines strongly suggesting counseling for kids who commit certain offenses seem to have been removed.

Let us know if you see other changes. You can submit comments by email until Aug. 8.

Ask about education in the upcoming presidential debate, July 23 in South Carolina. The debate is organized by CNN and YouTube, and debate questions will come from user-submitted videos uploaded to YouTube’s site. Roy Romer over at Ed in ‘08 is encouraging all those interested in education to submit questions on the topic, and apparently people are listening: on Monday, CNN said 190 of the 1,044 questions submitted were about education– more than any other topic– Romer reported.

YouTube will continue to accept questions until July 22 (this Sunday). To submit your own, see YouTube’s debate question submission page.

A lawsuit about special education in New York City is headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Federal Government is siding against the City. Joseph Goldstein of the New York Sun reports on the case, writing:

The case is likely to set standards for when localities must reimburse parents for private school tuition for students with a range of disabilities. The New York City Department of Education says it must only pay for private school if, after a child is first placed in a public school special education program, the school is unable to meet the needs of the child. The city claims that any other policy will require it to pay for the bias many parents have toward an expensive private education.

Check out the full article for more details.

If you have a kid or are one yourself, chances are you’ve got big plans for tonight, when the hotly anticipated final installment of the Harry Potter saga goes on sale. New York magazine has a rundown of the city’s biggest Potter parties. I’ll be joining the horses and quidditch players at the Community Bookstore in Park Slope before falling silent tomorrow to read along with other Potter fans the world over.

If you haven’t read any of the leaked versions of the book, what do you think will happen in it?

Fear no more. There are few excuses to keep teens’ noses out of the books this summer, thanks to the many free resources and programs provided at the increasingly popular teens-only space, appropriately dubbed Teen Central, at Donnell Public Library in midtown Manhattan (Map).

To keep the reading momentum up and running once the final school bell sounds for summer, Teen Central keeps its doors open seven days a week for kids between the ages of 12 and 19. Offering the hottest new titles in Young Adult literature (think travel series and graphic novels), CD’s, DVD’s, video games, and free internet access, Teen Central serves as an oasis of stimulating and educational books and other media.

And just to make sure teens don’t get bored of all those free books and music, the staff at Donnell’s Teen Central has also put together an itinerary of events and competitions for its ever-active clientèle. Teens compete with blenders during “Iron Chef” days and with video game controllers on “Game On” days. They can channel even more creative energy at craft workshops.

Wise teachers and parents know well the importance of summer reading lists to keep kids’ restless minds (and bodies) occupied. Yet new research shows just how much of an impact that summer reading has. As EdWeek reported this week on a recent Baltimore study, gaps in student achievement might very well be linked to the amount of reading done (or lack thereof) during those precious months outside school walls.

Check Teen Central’s calendar for a complete schedule of hours and programs going on this summer. Then check back in soon to see what the library has in store for the fast-approaching back-to-school days.

A tri-partisan group of senators yesterday introduced the “All Students Can Achieve Act,” which aims to address some of the failures of the controversial No Child Left Behind act, up for renewal this fall. Chancellor Klein was at the press conference, along with the new Washington, D.C., schools superintendent, to support the legislation proposed by senators Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). The All Students Can Achieve Act focuses not just on test scores but on improving teacher quality, establishing voluntary national standards, and closing the achievement gap. You can read more about the proposed legislation in a press release on the senators’ websites; here it is on Landrieu’s.

The Times has an interesting article today about the future of abstinence education, in which kids are taught that only abstinence can protect against pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Although a recent study suggests that teens nationwide are increasingly abstaining from sex and practicing safe sex, there is no evidence to show that the money poured into abstinence education, a favorite of the Bush administration, is to credit. Texas, for example, has received the most abstinence education funds but has seen the smallest drop in teen sex rates. Last month, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted against the White House’s proposed increase in abstinence-only funds, signally that the initiative may be in danger.

In 2005, New York received $13 million in federal and state funds to support abstinence-only sex education, second only to Texas, and the state currently designates no money for comprehensive sex ed, which teaches about all forms of contraception and protection from disease. If you are concerned about the quality of sex education in New York’s schools, the Sex Ed Alliance of New York City is organizing a campaign this week to ask the DOE to improve sex ed programs here in the city. The alliance is asking concerned citizens to call 311 this week or to send a letter to the mayor, which you can do online through the New York Civil Liberties Union website.

For summer reading lists and activities, parents and kids can log on to public library websites that offer booklists for all ages, from babies to teens. The sites feature an interactive “detective’ game that builds kids’ research skills and timely notices of book talks and other local library events. The New York State site, http://www.summerreadingnys.org/, includes information and ideas for parents and the New York City site has links to the New York, Brooklyn and Queens library systems, http://www.summerreading.org/.

Parents: if your questions about the results of the OLSAT/GRS tests for gifted and talented programs are still not resolved, you can ask to review the tests. But the requests must be received by July 30th. Contact your regional test coordinator or acommit@schools.nyc.gov.

The city’s schools received about $80 million in private donations last year, the Post reported this weekend. That’s up from less than $3 million seven years ago. This shift tells us a couple of things: More private groups see the city’s schools as worth investing in, and the DOE is working hard to bring private money to the public schools — something we know from its partnerships with the Gates Foundation and other major foundations. Nationally, school systems have seen an uptick in their reliance on private donations, usually to fund “extras” like arts and technology programs, the Detroit Free Press reported earlier this month.

More on Contracts for Excellence: Yesterday Manuel Rivera, the Deputy Secretary of Education for New York State, spoke during the CPAC meeting at Tweed. Unsurprisingly, many of the questions from committee members focused on New York City’s plan to meet the state’s Contracts for Excellence requirements.

Ultimately, education policy in New York State is governed by the Board of Regents, whose members are elected by the State Assembly. The Regents select and hire a Commissioner of Education to oversee the State Education Department (currently Richard Mills). The governor’s office, however, has substantial influence over education policy and control over the resources going to education. The Deputy Secretary of Education (Rivera) heads up education in Governor Spitzer’s administration.

What this means for New York City’s Contracts for Excellence plan is that, while Rivera will not decide whether or not the complies with the law– that job lies with the Regents and Mills– he will be in a position to offer input on the matter at the state level.

Because the City’s plan will not be formally submitted until July 15, and the Regents enforcement criteria won’t be decided until well after that, Rivera refrained from saying outright whether he felt the plan complies with the law.

Rivera did, however, shed light on why the period of public comment– and the notice for it– was so short. New York’s Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling that the state had to increase funding for New York City last November, and Spitzer proposed his Contracts for Excellence plan in January. That plan was not passed by Congress until April, leaving very little time to implement it for the coming year’s budget. Rather than delay the funding for an additional year– as some members of congress wanted– Rivera said the Governor’s office preferred to implement the law immediately to get more money flowing into New York City’s schools as soon as possible. This did not leave affected districts enough time to gather sufficient public input and devise a full plan for compliance, so the law allowed for temporary emergency regulations this year, with the understanding that those regulations would change before next year’s budgets are submitted.

So the bad news is that there is little parents can do this year to influence the City’s Contracts for Excellence spending plan. However, by getting involved at the state level as the Regents decide how the Contracts for Excellence plan will be enforced in the future, constituents can have a greater say over how the public input process will work in the future.

At the Contracts for Excellence hearing in Manhattan last night, dozens of parents, teachers, advocates, and students voiced harsh criticisms about the Department of Education’s plans to spend this year’s record increase in state education funding.

The funds, which are a direct result of a joint lawsuit against the state by two non-profit organizations, will result in over $1 billion in additional money for New York City schools during the coming school year. Of that total, $228 million is required to conform to Governor Spitzer’s Contracts for Excellence mandate, meaning the money must be used to accomplish one of five specific goals, including smaller class sizes and more “time on task” — i.e. longer days or more days in the school year. (For more on the history of this issue, check out our previous posts on the topic.)

Last week Chancellor Klein announced his plan for spending the Contracts for Excellence money, essentially claiming that the City’s new Fair Student Funding system would automatically meet the requirements of Contracts for Excellence, and nothing more needed to be done. The plan did, however, specify how much money will be used to address each of Spitzer’s allowed spending categories. This week the DOE is conducting hearings throughout the City, gathering public comment on the plan, and at last night’s hearing in Manhattan the comments reflected serious disenchantment with the plan.

Geri Palast of Campaign for Fiscal Equity (one of the groups that brought the original lawsuit) stressed the need for specific commitments in the plan. “The City’s plan is overly broad and is not specific enough,” she said, and she asked the city to post individual schools’ plans on the DOE’s Contracts for Excellence webpage.

Many speakers criticized the lack of serious public input for the DOE’s spending plan. The press release detailing the plan and the schedule for public hearings was published July 5, and the plan must be submitted to the state by July 15, leaving only ten days for public comment of any sort. The short notice, and the fact that the hearings are occurring in July– when education is not at the forefront of many parents’ minds– drew sharp criticism.

Others bemoaned the lack of a long-term plan to comply with the Contracts for Excellence requirements. Leonie Haimson– a parent and blogger for NYC Public School Parents– said the plan is in “flagrant violation of state law” because there is “absolutely no five-year plan to reduce class size, as mandated by the Contracts for Excellence.”

But the most common criticism by far was the need for more focus on reducing class sizes. Of the $228 million governed by the Contracts for Excellence requirements, the plan classifies $111 million for class size reduction, hiring an additional 1,300 teachers for the coming year. However, it’s unclear how much this will actually reduce class sizes, since we don’t know how many of those teachers will have their own classrooms. Additionally, Haimson and many others have noted that even if every teacher were to have their own new classroom, average class size across the city would only fall by between .3 and .8 students. The DOE, for its part, provides only the following clarification: “By investing in class size reduction, the DOE projects first-year class size reduction that exceeds the annual rate of reduction over the last five years.” Seth Pearce, a senior at Laguardia and representative of the New York City Student Union, also stressed the need for smaller classes, saying reduced class size is “instrumental to improving teacher quality.” His complete comments can be read here. Ben Shanahan, of Hunter College High School, also weighed in– see his comments at NYC Student Word.

For a more complete discussion of the class size reduction plan’s criticisms, read Haimson’s post on the topic. Otherwise, check back here for continuing coverage.

7/13 Update: NYC Public School Parents has links to the comments made by several more people Wednesday evening.

Over at Staten Island Live, Yoav Gonen reports that beginning in September, Port Richmond High School and McKee High School will be among 16 schools citywide allowing students to store their cell phones off-campus in secure lockers. The 16 schools are piloting a storage solution the DOE is allowing as a compromise to the stringent cell phone ban that so many parents and kids hate. The lockers will accommodate only a quarter of students, Gonen reports. Has anyone heard which other schools will be part of the pilot, or how schools were selected for it?

President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act is coming up for reauthorization in congress, and many are calling for changes. In particular, Edspresso reports today about the Derby, Kansas, board of education’s decision to issue a resolution on the matter.

The board voted to endorse the No Child Left Behind Improvement Act (also known as HR 648) with specific recommendations for greater local control. The school board from Highland, Indiana, has followed suit. The Northwest Indiana Times reports National School Board association urged the board to issue the resolution.

So the wave is starting, and local education groups are weighing in. Check out the current state of No Child Left Behind, and if you have thoughts, tell your congressional representative or organize a resolution within your PTA or district.

The DOE has put online contact information for many offices that should remain current while the department is reorganizing this summer. There’s a directory of “District Parent Advocates” (replacing parent support officers), enrollment offices, and Committees on Special Education, as well as contact information for the various school support organizations and summer school liaisons. We’ve heard that some of this information has changed already, but it should be a good start if you need to reach someone at the DOE this summer.

The On Education column this week in the Times, by reporter David Herszenhorn, addresses a simple idea that, if actually understood by legislators and the general public, could dramatically change the way schools are governed: “Working with children looks easy. It is not.”

Herzsenhorn writes that covering the schools has shown him that the challenges facing people working in schools are broader than most on the outside imagine. He writes:

School professionals are called upon not only to educate children, but also to nurture curiosity and civic values, and even to teach the most basic manners. … Not only do professional educators have to know how to deal with children, they have to be clever about soothing an even wackier bunch: parents.The daily work in schools is so hard that most educators in the system do not distinguish between the chancellor’s office and the mayor, the labor unions and state government, the teachers’ contract and the federal No Child Left Behind law when they complain, frequently, that the “system” is against them.

Forces above and beyond school level often make the work in classrooms more difficult. And the work in classrooms is difficult enough.

While this notion might seem like a no-brainer, the fact is that teachers and administrators are continually asked to improve students’ performance — measured in standardized test scores — without being able to address kids’ vast “non-academic” needs. And when teachers struggle to raise scores, their quality is impugned. Sometimes criticizing teachers is justified, but often it’s a smokescreen to distract from the more complicated factors underlying student performance.

A quarter of kids in New York City live in poverty (as do 1 in 6 kids nationally). The city’s expansion of the summer meals program underscores the reality that many kids here are often hungry. This reality, like many others beyond teachers’ control, makes it hard for kids to learn. Not until legislators sincerely address the “forces above and beyond school level” can successfully teaching kids get easier.

Above: Parents at the press conference demonstrate the minor effect of reducing class size by less than one kid per class. Philissa Cramer/Insideschools.org

At this morning’s press conference on the steps of City Hall, Robert Jackson, chair of the City Council’s education committee, and small class size advocates railed against the DOE’s “bad faith effort” to reduce class size, as outlined in the city’s proposed spending plan. They also took aim at the DOE’s “lack of transparency” with the hard numbers behind this initiative and others; in particular, they noted that it’s unclear just how many of the 1,300 new teachers the DOE says it is hiring will have their own classrooms. Here are some sound bites from the press conference:

Jackson: “We said, where’s the rest of the plan? … You question [DOE officials], and most of the time they will not come up with answers. … There’s so much lack of transparency, I cannot tell [what’s true] as chair of the education committee.”

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters: “We asked [DOE officials] how many new general education classes will there be? They couldn’t tell us.”

Noreen Connell of the Educational Priorities Panel: “What is the advantage of this bad faith effort? What can be gained by not reducing class size?”

Several people who spoke also decried the mid-summer timeline for responding to the DOE’s spending plan, which could prevent people from being able to get information quickly and weigh in with their feedback. You can give feedback on the plan at five public hearings on the Contracts for Excellence this week. See the Insideschools calendar for details.

City Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson will be holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall at 11:30 a.m. Sunday to address the DOE’s proposal for how to spend the long-awaited Campaign for Fiscal Equity money. Jackson was an original plaintiff in the case. According to the NYC Public School Parents blog, Jackson will be joined by representatives from a variety of other educational organizations, and all parents and children are welcome. Map

In an extension of our recent post about NYC’s use of $1.03 billion in additional state education funding ($228 million of which must conform to Governor Spitzer’s Contract for Excellence requirements), the Times reports today on Chancellor Klein’s plans for the money.

Specifically, Klein talks about how the Department of Ed plans to fulfill the Contract for Excellence requirements with the required $228 million: $106 million of it will reduce class size by hiring 1300 new teachers. Other funding will extend class time and provide more resources for training and development.

This is the first I’ve heard about Klein and the DOE acknowledging that Fair Student Funding would meet the requirements for the state’s Contract for Excellence requirements. Some, including Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, were less than thrilled with the announcement, the Times reports, calling Klein’s planned class size reductions “so minimal as to be meaningless.”

July 11 update: For criticism of Klein’s plan, check out NYC Educator’s post on the topic.

At Insideschools, we pay careful attention when a school gets a new principal. So when Jolanta Rohloff, the controversial principal of Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School, resigned in March, we took notes — especially because we had been following her exploits, which included unfairly reducing students’ grades and issuing many “unsatisfactory” ratings to teachers, pretty closely. Now, Rohloff has resurfaced in news that reveals unsettling information about how principals are assigned to schools.

Last week, the Post reported that Rohloff was one of two candidates for the principal at Manhattan Center for Math and Science. Earlier this week, Manhattan Center parents told the Daily News they felt “hoodwinked” because they had received no information about Rohloff and her terrible track record before interviewing her. Yesterday came the news, also in the Daily News, that Rohloff had removed herself from contention for that job and instead will work to develop a new high school that will open in 2008 — where she will be principal.

The Daily News also reported recently that Rohloff is receiving the maximum bonus for Lafayette’s performance, even though she left the school before the year ended and the DOE considers the school so weak that it is being phased out. (In general, the list of schools where principals are receiving bonuses doesn’t seem, at first glance, to correspond to what Insideschools knows about the schools’ quality.)

Here are a few questions I’d love to have answered: Why are some principals censured and even removed for grading improprieties and others are not? Why are principals who have proven themselves divisive and even unfit allowed (or in this case, it seems, encouraged) to continue to lead schools? And what checks are in place at the DOE to make sure the results of data-crunching on principal performance and other matters actually make sense?

Elizabeth Green at the New York Sun reports today about the City’s use of the upcoming dramatic increase in state education funding, which are supposed to be used in accordance with Governor Spitzer’s “Contract for Excellence” initiative. (For more on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s lawsuit behind the increase and the details of the Contract for Excellence, see Green’s article or the recent Insideschools piece on the parent letter to the Board of Regents.)

The city will see an increase of about $700 million for the 2007-2008 school year, and, in principle, this money must be spent on one of the five priorities outlined in Spitzer’s Contract for Excellence, including reducing class size, providing after-school programs, and lengthening the school year. However, there are a number of loopholes that allow the money to be used for other purposes, such as charter schools and “experimental programs.”

Green writes:

The state had reported in April that $317 million of the new funds would be governed by Mr. Spitzer’s accountability plan, called the Contract for Excellence. But new numbers released Thursday will likely leave just $228 million to be governed by the contract’s restrictions, a city spokeswoman, Debra Wexler, said.

Some are disappointed with this change, including Michael Rebell, one of the attorneys who brought the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, Green reports.For an alternative view, check out the dissent by Joe Williams on the Dems for Ed Reform blog.

In a New York Times column (subscription required) today, Bob Herbert writes about a case of police harassment in the classroom– one incident on a long list compiled by the New York Civil Liberties Union in its report “Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools.”

According to Herbert’s column, Principal Michael Soguero of Bronx Guild High School was suspended in 2005 after being arrested in front of a classroom full of students by Officer Juan Gonzalez. His crime? Defending a 16-year-old girl who had cursed within earshot of a police officer on her way to class. When the officer attempted to arrest the student, Principal Soguero intervened. Charges were later dropped, and Soguero has since moved to Colorado. Although Police Department and the district attorney initially supported Officer Gonzalez, Herbert writes that he has since learned Gonzalez is “indeed a problem officer,” and that his gun and badge have since been confiscated.

Since the DOE announced last month its plan to pay some students for their performance on tests, the education world has been abuzz with commentary on the program. Here’s a roundup of the dialogue.

Today in the Times, Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, says decades of psychology research suggest the plan could backfire. He writes:

Assumptions that economists make about human motivation, though intuitive and straightforward, are false. In particular, the idea that adding motives always helps is false. There are circumstances in which adding an incentive competes with other motives and diminishes their impact. Psychologists have known this for more than 30 years.

Less demurely, historian Diane Ravitch lambasted the plan in the Huffington Post shortly after it was announced, calling it “anti-democratic, anti-civic, anti-intellectual, and anti-social.”

The plan to pay kids has also found a host of defenders. In the comments on Ravitch’s piece, for example, one person wrote: “I think I know a lot more about poor people and kids than you do and you are WRONG. This plan sends exactly the right message: good grades are valuable.”

And the Staten Island Advance took a look at a similar program in a small town in Ohio and reported that school officials there had seen some signs of success. Those officials also told the Advance that the program had been well received because they had consulted with community members for months before launching the program.