In keeping with its promise to produce more of the “Best of …” lists that make newsstand customers open their wallets, US News has just come out with its first-ever list of best high schools in the country. New York City has six schools in the top 100. All of them — Stuyvesant (No. 15), Bronx Science (20), Staten Island Tech (22), Brooklyn Tech (39), Townsend Harris (45), and NEST (74) — are highly selective.

Schools were evaluated on how well their students do on state tests, how well “disadvantaged” kids did, and how kids fared on AP tests. So it’s no surprise that the most selective schools come out on top, and that good schools that don’t offer AP classes, such as Bard, didn’t make the list.

Thirty-eight more NYC schools made the cut for the silver and bronze categories. I didn’t check every school, but scanning the list I saw at least a handful of schools that got C’s on their progress reports. The more lists and grades we have, the less each one will mean.

Upset about the amount of time he’s spending helping his middle school-aged daughters with homework, City Council member Peter Vallone of Queens wants to introduce a resolution to limit homework to 2.5 hours a night and require schools to create one homework-free night a week. The mayor doesn’t sound interested in taking up the cause, and the DOE believes homework load is best set by individual schools.

For most kids, I can’t imagine that a limit of 2.5 hours of homework would mean a reduction in the time spent on homework. Still, as Izzy noted earlier, some schools have a reputation for handing out hours of homework every night. And it is true that the most conscientious students and parents, who are the least likely to need more work, are the most likely to suffer when it’s assigned.

Vallone’s quest may be quixotic but he isn’t alone. Last year Insideschools reviewed two books arguing for the abolition of homework; we also interviewed Alfie Kohn, the author of one of the books, who said that homework, at least before high school, is “all pain, no gain.”

Hey again everyone! It’s been a while, and I’ve made a ton of decisions since the last time I blogged.

I handed in my high school application yesterday, and after thinking it over for weeks, I’ve chosen to put the small school in my neighborhood first. If I get in, it’s guaranteed to be extremely difficult, and chances are, most of my time for the next four years is going to be totally devoted to it. I’m honestly a little afraid that if I get in, it’s going to be too hard for me, and that I might crack under the pressure. But at the same time, I am totally ready for a new challenge, and I think that I’ll be able to handle it.

Until I get my answer (as to whether or not I’ve made it in), I’m going to sit back and relax, because I’ve done all that I can at this point. The specialized high schools still haven’t sent out the answers yet either, but I’ll tackle that mountain when it comes.

As a second choice, I put down my current school. I did that because it’s honestly the safest school that I can think of at this point; I know the area, the teachers, the kids, and it’s not necessarily known for being a school of crushing homework or a hyper-speed curriculum. So if worse comes to worse, I’ll just stay where I am, which isn’t really a “worst” at all!

Yesterday the DOE and the UFT announced a feel-good “Thank a Teacher Campaign” — just in time for the holiday season, and to head off further criticism from teachers who oppose the new Teacher Performance Unit that will go after incompetent teachers. Students and public school graduates can submit short essays about teachers that made a difference. The DOE will randomly select 200 teachers from those honored to attend a party. Plus, Starbucks has donated gift cards for teachers.

A party! Starbucks certificates! I’m not sure that’s what the UFT members rallying on Monday night against the Teacher Performance Unit were seeking. Other than the fact that it’s clearly designed to undercut the union, the campaign is a nice one. Teachers ought to be thanked. It’s too bad it took a lot of hurt feelings for the DOE to make that happen.

Send your contributions to ThankATeacher@schools.nyc.gov by Dec. 21. Some testimonials are already up, mostly from DOE officials.

Thanks to NYC Public School Parents for pointing out news I missed about testing in my home state, North Carolina. Taking into account criticism that students are spending too much time taking tests and schools are spending too much time teaching to them, a state commission has recommended that some standardized tests be eliminated and others not be considered when evaluating schools.

It’s up to the state Board of Education to approve the changes, but if it does, kids in 4th, 7th, and 10th grade will no longer have to take a (routinely flawed) writing test, and 8th graders will be free from a computer exam, which was far more difficult for teachers than students even in 1997, when I took it. And the pressure will be off in five high school subjects, where students will still have to take end-of-course tests to pass but schools won’t be judged on their success.

North Carolina’s testing program has been in place since 1995 and was a model for other states’ accountability programs. A member of the commission told the News and Observer, “We’re testing more but we’re not seeing the results. … We’re not seeing graduation rates increasing. We’re not seeing remediation rates decreasing. Somewhere along the way testing isn’t aligning with excellence.” Now it’s time to try something else. Trends in education have such a short lifespan. Joel Klein and James Liebman may already be living in the past.

A week after hearing that money it won for the city would finally be on its way, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity has issued recommendations on how to reduce class size in struggling schools. In a report, “A Seat of One’s Own: Class Size Reduction in the Lowest Performing Schools in New York City,” CFE shows that the city’s capital plan falls far short of funding the number of classrooms that will need to be created to drop class sizes at schools on the state’s list of those in need of improvement.

Of the 408 schools on the list, CFE found that class size can be reduced immediately at 152 schools and that 43 other low-performing schools can drop class size if they put in place adjustments such as creating annexes or improving the way schools within a building share space. (View geographical maps with school-by-school recommendations.) Beyond that, however, the city would need to add more than 1,500 new classrooms to help the remaining 122 schools that do not already have reduced class size. But the city’s capital plan provides only 680 new classrooms, and the DOE is planning to hire only 1,300 new teachers.

With its focus on the lowest-performing schools, the CFE report doesn’t even begin to address the investment that will be required to reduce class sizes at the two-thirds of schools not considered failing, many of which are seriously overcrowded. As Class Size Matters’s Leonie Haimson has noted, the DOE has not yet released current data about class size citywide; the DOE says the information will be released by Dec. 18.

Urban Academy Principal Ann Cook collects signatures to a Time Out From Testing petition opposing the progress reports during the UFT’s candlelight vigil against the Teacher Performance Unit. (Philissa Cramer/Insideschools)

Hundreds of teachers lined Chambers Street in front of Tweed earlier tonight to protest the creation of a “Teacher Performance Unit” to root out and fire incompetent teachers. Speakers included City Council members Robert Jackson and John Liu, UFT President Randi Weingarten, and a UFT chapter leader who has experienced reprisals for speaking out for teachers and students in her school.

UFT supporters sing “Solidarity Forever” at the vigil. (Philissa Cramer/Insideschools)

Unfortunately for critics of the union, no one defended truly terrible teachers or said they should be retained even if remediation fails; instead, the speakers repeatedly decried the culture of fear and potential for abuse the TPU creates.Inside Tweed, the Panel for Educational Policy voted 8-1 to approve a slightly modified Gifted & Talented proposal. The revised policy builds in a sibling preference policy, eliminates on-site assessments for the three citywide programs, and adds summer testing dates for children whose families are new to the city. Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan representative to the PEP, voted against the proposal to honor the wishes of District 3’s CEC, which passed a motion expressing concern about the potential closure of successful G&T programs on the Upper West Side.

It’s a big night down at Tweed — the UFT is holding a candlelight vigil at 5:30 p.m. to oppose the Teacher Performance Unit announced last week. Some are saying the vigil is a symbolic event designed to prevent more substantive action, but Chancellor Klein is nervous enough that he sent out a fawning letter explaining the TPU to teachers this afternoon, saying, “Our teachers are heroes, one and all, and I am deeply grateful to them.”

Then, at 6 p.m., the Panel for Educational Policy is meeting to vote on the Gifted & Talented proposal. Also on the agenda: progress reports and NAEP results.

Buried in a Downtown Express article about the changes to the middle school admission timeline — Did you hear? The calendar will be standardized across districts and applications will be due in February — was this gem about Insideschools:

The problems with notification — [parent Linda] Levy found out about the timeline change not from the school system but from the Web site insideschools.org — are quintessential Department of Education issues, she said.

So that makes me curious. I’d like to think Insideschools always has the most timely and accurate information about schools. But schools, other parents, and yes, even the DOE often beat us to the punch. Which source do you think is the best? Answer in our poll (at the top right side of the blog). Explain your answer in the comments.

I bet Joel Klein was thankful for the Thanksgiving-induced reprieve from criticism. When the NAEP scores came out last week, the DOE touted them as proof of success. But more reality-driven commentators were quick to note that in all but one category — 4th grade math — scores were flat and that even in that category, the gains are only there if one makes the comparison using numbers that predate the Bloomberg-Klein reforms. The Queens Chronicle even called the NAEP scores “a damning blow to the Bloomberg administration.”

Then came the news, broken by the Sun’s Elizabeth Green, that New York gave more students testing accommodations than any other city in the country. With a quarter of students taking the 4th grade math test and about 20 percent of students taking the other tests receiving special accommodations, some testing experts think the results aren’t worth much. “When you change the statistics for 25% of the people who are guaranteed to be at the lower end, that’s going to have a tremendous impact,” an NYU professor told the Sun.

A couple of weeks ago, NYC Public School Parents wondered whether the report card fiasco would prove to be an “emperor’s new clothes moment” for Klein and Bloomberg. The NAEP scores have done much more to show that the DOE’s reforms unfortunately have not produced the improvements the DOE says they have. And the more Joel Klein insists that everyone else is wrong and he is right about how to interpret test scores — as he did in an email, sent last week to all DOE employees, decrying the unfavorable press coverage — the sillier the DOE looks.

Happy Thanksgiving from Insideschools. We’ll be taking the next couple of days off and hope you will be, too. But if you absolutely need something to do, here are some options:

• Help an 8th grader finalize his high school choices. Applications are due next week.
• Send in a question for Insideschools’ psychologist or college counselor.
• Consider signing Time Out From Testing’s online petition opposing the report cards.
• Play FreeRice.com. Help feed the hungry while boosting your vocabulary.

See you next week and have a great holiday!

Middle school tours can be tough on kids and parents, in part because change is hard. Visiting schools feels like an abrupt and painful reminder that elementary school – and childhood – isn’t forever. We don’t always know how to make informed judgments.Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much tours ask of educators – and how much I appreciate the chance to watch them in action.

Teachers are always on. In the District Two classrooms we’ve been visiting, they’re attempting to keep as many as 30 or more students engaged as tours march in and out. Parents peer intently, hoping for a teachable moment or a clarifying detail about the lesson before shuffling out. Kids wave at their friends from elementary schools.

In those brief moments, it’s difficult to capture much about the quality of teaching.

In the talks that follow, principals are measured by their ability to articulate a vision for their middle school. They patiently field what might seem like endless questions. Parents take and compare snapshot notes.

The New York City Department of Education talks a lot about accountability these days, pushing new letter grades as an example.

I don’t find those grades realistic or telling, so I’d like to make the argument that tours — and choice — force a different kind of accountability. It’s one that as a parent, I am especially grateful for.

In the three very different but equally impressive middle schools we’ve toured so far – Clinton, MAT, and School of the Future – teachers have willingly opened their classrooms, even as they are pressured constantly to raise test scores, prepare better lesson plans and get ready for 100 or more parent teacher conferences. Many have taken the time to explain what they are teaching and why. Principals are on display as well, taking time from the unrelenting demands of their day.

If we didn’t have choice in our district, my children would simply move on to their zoned middle school or junior high, like I did during my suburban childhood. My parents weren’t probing into classrooms and weighing schools like Salk that emphasize science vs. schools that stress art or “habits of mind,” a concept I learned about while visiting the intriguing School of the Future. At the age of 10, I most certainly was not asking myself what kind of a school environment I might thrive in, as my sons have had to.

Those of us lucky enough to be zoned for districts that offer choice have an opportunity to question authority and think deeply about education.

We wouldn’t have this chance if the educators weren’t willing to educate us.

A new poll out of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute shows that the majority of New York City voters — 61 percent — thought the school grades released earlier this month were fair. An even higher percentage of the public school parents polled — 75 percent — said their own school’s grade was fair. Just over a quarter of those polled said they are satisfied with the city’s schools — the highest approval rate in years of polls. And voters are pretty split on whether Chancellor Klein is doing a good job — but voters in the Bronx are happiest with his tenure.

These poll results suggest that Insideschools readers are more critical than the typical New Yorker — in our recent poll, almost 60 percent of readers gave the grades either a “D” or an “F.”

What does this mean? In contrast with national trends that show people approving of their own schools even while being dissatisfied with schools in general, a whole lot of New Yorkers must think their school truly deserves a middling grade. And if the chancellor and mayor wants to bolster their approval ratings, they ought to rethink the plan to yank principals of failing schools — only 29 percent of voters think that’s an appropriate consequence.

Check out what’s new — and then tell Insideschools in the comments what we got right, what we missed, and what questions our correspondents should answer next.

“High school applications due Nov. 30; Here’s how to rank your choices“: Our advice: Be very careful drawing up your list of high school choices. You will be assigned to a high school based on how you rank the schools — and how the schools rank you.”Poll results: Parents skeptical of school grades, undecided about G&T“: Insideschools readers gave failing marks to the progress reports issued by the DOE this month. Reaction was more mixed to the proposed changes to G&T admissions.

Dispatches from the G&T public meetings in Queens and Brooklyn

Judy on lunchtime, Dr. Patti on mean girls, and our college counselor on AP classes

And, of course, new reviews, including nine high school reviews to help you choose

The UFT says more teachers are resigning every year. Since 2001, the number of certified teachers resigning has increased by more than two-thirds, from 2,544 to 4,273 last year, the UFT’s data show. The DOE says that these numbers are wrong. But does the DOE really care? After all, it wants to see more teachers get fired. But with all this resigning and firing, where will the 1,300 new teachers come from to staff the smaller classes the state has funded?

After a long delay, news about the Contracts for Excellence has finally come down from Albany — and the verdict is good for advocates who pushed the state to maintain attention on small claze size and other goals of the original court case behind the new money. In the revised plan, the state required the DOE to shift $45 million to the highest-need schools, increase the funds aimed at class size reduction, and cut out the plan to spend $13 million in state aid on standardized testing. The new spending begins now, with the Post reporting that the DOE will hire 1,300 more teachers to reduce class size.

The chancellor said in a press conference yesterday that the new plan is “stronger and better,” but he probably isn’t thrilled about the Times headline above his quote: “City Bows to State on a School Improvement Plan.” Still, as the Sun notes, the revisions are unlikely to change the main thrusts of the DOE’s reforms, but at least the state has signaled that it’s paying attention to what the DOE is doing and won’t rubber stamp just any policy the DOE devises.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity and the Alliance for Quality Education, which brought the original case to court, released a positive statement yesterday, with CFE Executive Director Geri Palast saying, ““After 13 years of CFE litigation, Governor Spitzer broke the Albany gridlock on school finance reform with the Contract for Excellence (also CFE) initiative that drives school aid to districts based on need, not politics, and makes clear that new money must be spent on high-needs students in low-performing school and on strategies proven to boost student achievement.”

Looking for a laugh this Monday morning? Check out the results of Eduwonkette’s Report Card Haiku Contest. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find:

who should get an A?
duck*duck*duck*duck*duck* duck*duck
duck*duck*duck*duck GOOSE!
-eduwonkette to my son’s teachers
to him you’re a shining star
not just a C grade
-nyc momMy school got an A!
And I thought we were failing–
I was almost SURR! -
Anonymous 1:50 PM

There are 68 haiku in all. Download the complete magazine(pdf) for some levity, but be careful — some of the poems are deadly serious.

The key factor in both the transmission of knowledge and the growth of a student as an individual is trust. Trust is necessary to build the relationship between a teacher and student. To run a school effectively, there must be an atmosphere of trust between teachers and administration. This principle — of trust as the mortar that holds together our education system — is also fundamental to the relationship between the DOE, the city and the members of individual schools, specifically the teachers.

The city’s new initiative to fire more teachers is a betrayal of this trust. The DOE’s new Teacher Performance Unit, a group of five lawyers headed by a former district attorney, has been given the goal of helping principals create cases against tenured teachers and getting rid of unsuccessful young teachers before they get tenure.

The way that the DOE has handled this program reflects a pattern of disrespect that the DOE has shown to other members of the educational community. Through initiatives like the cell phone ban, the DOE has continually antagonized students, teachers and parents. Instead of engendering the trust necessary to hold our schools together, they are creating a situation filled with fear.

Students have often felt over-criminalized by policies like the cell phone ban and random scanning. By hiring former prosecutors to fire our teachers, the DOE has, as Philissa said, made being a bad teacher a crime. The program also sets principals against teachers, further dividing our school community.

In order for Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein’s reforms to be successful, they must first end their pattern of bullying and disrespect. They must instead seek to create an atmosphere of trust: one in which the most basic relationships within the system: those between students and teachers in a classroom setting, mirror the relationship between the city and DOE and the various constituent groups within our education system. That is the only way that we can hold an education system a large and complex as the one we have together.

Cross-posted at NYC Students Blog

Why Are middle school curriculums so different? And should every 6th grader be expected to learn the same things? What should every sixth-grader know?

These questions have been on my mind since I began my second round of District Two middle school tours in Manhattan this fall.

I’m trying to find the best fit for my 5th-grade son, but I’m also trying to figure out what is actually taught in 6th grade, why each school approaches it so differently and how much it ultimately matters. How does one define a good education?

Should 6th graders study Newton and the Laws of Nature, The Rise of Napoleon and Greek and Latin Roots? Should they learn trillions, integers and square roots? Child Labor and Mexican Independence? The French Revolution and Ancient Rome? In what grade and in what sequence?

All of the above are among the suggestions for 6th graders by noted author and educator E. D. Hirsch Jr. in What Your Sixth Grader Needs to Know.

I read the book recently and had the chance to spend some time with Hirsch at a conference. I noticed that only some of his suggestions have made it into the middle schools I’ve visited so far.

Hirsch says parents should examine curriculums to make sure that “they spell out, in clear and concrete terms a core of specific content and skills all children at a particular grade level are expected to learn by the end of the school year.’’ I have yet to leave a tour with a curriculum in hand, although I always try to ask what will be taught.

So far, it seems to vary widely from school to school – and often changes from year to year.Hirsch touched off a debate when he wrote a book called Cultural Literacy, Hirsch rejects the idea that a set curriculum is either authoritarian or conservative, instead describing it as “super democratic.’’

I can’t help wondering, as I continue these tours, who makes the decision in each school for what must be taught, beyond what will be on state tests that schools are increasingly judged – and graded on.

Whether or not you agree with Hirsch’s assessments of what every 6th grader should know – and many don’t — the questions he raises seem both worthwhile and interesting to pose on tours.

I’ll try to find more answers.

Read all of Liz Willen’s Middle School Muddle

Why Are middle school curriculums so different? And should every 6th grader be expected to learn the same things? What should every sixth-grader know?

These questions have been on my mind since I began my second round of District Two middle school tours in Manhattan this fall.

I’m trying to find the best fit for my 5th-grade son, but I’m also trying to figure out what is actually taught in 6th grade, why each school approaches it so differently and how much it ultimately matters. How does one define a good education?

Should 6th graders study Newton and the Laws of Nature, The Rise of Napoleon and Greek and Latin Roots? Should they learn trillions, integers and square roots? Child Labor and Mexican Independence? The French Revolution and Ancient Rome? In what grade and in what sequence?

All of the above are among the suggestions for 6th graders by noted author and educator E. D. Hirsch Jr. in What Your Sixth Grader Needs to Know.

I read the book recently and had the chance to spend some time with Hirsch at a conference. I noticed that only some of his suggestions have made it into the middle schools I’ve visited so far.

Hirsch says parents should examine curriculums to make sure that “they spell out, in clear and concrete terms a core of specific content and skills all children at a particular grade level are expected to learn by the end of the school year.’’I have yet to leave a tour with a curriculum in hand, although I always try to ask what will be taught.

So far, it seems to vary widely from school to school – and often changes from year to year.Hirsch touched off a debate when he wrote a book called Cultural Literacy, Hirsch rejects the idea that a set curriculum is either authoritarian or conservative, instead describing it as “super democratic.’’

I can’t help wondering, as I continue these tours, who makes the decision in each school for what must be taught, beyond what will be on state tests that schools are increasingly judged – and graded on.

Whether or not you agree with Hirsch’s assessments of what every 6th grader should know – and many don’t — the questions he raises seem both worthwhile and interesting to pose on tours.

I’ll try to find more answers.

Scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress tests are out, and New York City kids did great! Or not. Let’s see what folks have to say about the results of the test considered “the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas.”

“City Students Stalled on National Education Tests,” from the Sun: “Scores on a math test for fourth-graders went up, but others are statistically flat since 2005.”"New York City Public School Students Make Gains on 2007 NAEP tests,” a DOE press release: “New York City students made impressive gains on the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, with particularly significant progress achieved by 4^th graders in mathematics compared to their peers in other cities and by Black 4^th-grade students in both reading and math.”

Who’s right? You be the judge. Check out the scores in math and English for yourself.

Farewell to DOE administrator Jean-Claude Brizard, who has been offered the Rochester superintendency. We’re sure he’ll do a great job there. It’s just too bad the DOE didn’t want to hold on to him.

Today, it was reported that the DOE’s plan to install cell phone lockers outside of several schools has been put on hold. This plan was created as a possible resolution to the cell phone ban, the contentious rule that states that NYC students are not allowed to have their cell phones in school, even if they are turned off.

In short, the ban is wrong because it puts students, who commute up to four hours per day, into an unsafe situation because it takes away their main line of communication with parents and the police in the event of an emergency. This is in turn contributes to distrust between students and that makes the already difficult tasks of teaching and learning slightly more impossible.This new plan of building lockers outside of school in which students would pay to store their cell phones is a waste of money. The safety issues that transparent outdoor lockers raise are to complicated to resolve. It doesn’t adequately relieve the distrust in our schools. And it does not address the real issue that the cell phone ban is trying to address: academic integrity.

The main reason that Bloomberg has articulated in support of the ban is that students misuse cell phones in class. He says that students make calls and text messages in class and use their cell phones to cheat on tests. While my first instinct is to ask the mayor why he does not ban pen and paper from schools (because if you did a statistical analysis of cheating in NYC schools I’m sure you’d find that students use those as means of cheating much more often than they use cell phones), I believe that it is more important to propose a simple and effective solution to the issue of students misusing cell phones in class.

Instead of banning cell phones and creating a host of new problems, or building super-high-tech-theft-proof-safety-guaranteed-outdoor-transparent cell phone lockers and wasting too much of the DOE’s valuable funds, why don’t you just LOWER CLASS SIZES!

A student won’t get away with using a cell phone in a class of 25! They just won’t. And by lowering class sizes you will also increase the amount of actual education that goes on in our school because teachers will be able to develop better learning relationships with their students. As a high school teacher told me, “Lowering class size would fix everything.” Everything including preventing students from misusing their cell phones in class and thus getting rid of the need for a citywide ban.

There you have it: a real solution.

The DOE initiative of the day is to fire more teachers, the Times reports. The city has hired top-notch lawyers to help principals build cases against tenured teachers and is encouraging principals to fire more teachers before they get tenure. UFT head Randi Weingarten is naturally upset, linking the new initiative to the progress reports and saying, “Basically, it’s signaling to principals that rather than working to support teachers, the school system is going to give you a way to try to get rid of teachers.”

A few thoughts: No one wants bad teachers to stick around, but the tone of the DOE’s program is just mean. Hiring a former district attorney to supervise the firings? Now being a weak teacher is a crime. Under this system the same people assigned to help struggling teachers are also charged with building the case against them. Will teachers be less likely to seek out help when they are having trouble if needing help can be perceived as a sign of weakness? None of the DOE reforms can succeed without strong teachers who are happy to helm New York City classrooms. Making teachers terrified and suspicious of their supervisors can’t be good for morale. And bad morale is bad for kids.

I’d also love to know what the DOE’s projections are for how many teachers deserve to be fired each year under the new initiative. Right now about 10-15 tenured teachers are fired each year for “incompetence” and about 65 probationary teachers are not given tenure, the Times reports. How many do the number-crunchers at Tweed think need to be fired? Is it 100? 200? A thousand? I’m sure there are projections. Will principals be held accountable for meeting a purge quota? Will community superintendents? It sounds unsavory but in the data-driven DOE I wouldn’t be surprised if school leaders were required to meet some kind of firing-to-student performance ratio.

Finally, we should think about how this push will actually affect the teaching corps in schools. After all, the city does have a hard time finding qualified teachers, especially in math, science, and special education. How many principals will really use the new resources to fire new teachers before they are tenured? I’m guessing that principals in high-turnover schools would often rather take a chance that a struggling new teacher will improve over time than go through the rigmarole of removing him and finding a replacement. So I think we will be more likely to see teachers terminated before they get tenure in more functional schools, where they have a higher chance of getting the resources they would need to improve. (On the other hand, preventing bad teachers who leave good schools from becoming bad teachers at weak schools does need to happen — at the Research Partnership conference I attended in October, one paper showed that that is the typical trajectory for struggling teachers. The paper said that bad teachers, as judged in value-added assessments of student performance, in weak schools were more likely to leave teaching altogether.)

But it’s in less functional schools — schools where the principal and his teaching staff might not see eye to eye — that I think we will see more tenured teachers being pursued under the new initiative. I can’t tell you how many principals have told me that their school’s inability to help students is the fault of experienced teachers who refuse to adopt new programs. I’m sure it’s a real problem in breeding a unified teaching staff. But refusing to get with the program du jour is not the same as incompetence and I am concerned that this initiative will allow principals to conflate the two issues. If they are permitted to do so, this could result in even larger numbers of inexperienced but impressionable teachers staffing the most difficult schools with the principals least likely to want to develop them.

Whatever happened to the DOE’s plan to install lockers outside middle and high schools for kids to stash their banned cell phones during the day? Nothing, it seems. As recently as July we were reading that schools had been selected for the storage pilot, but now the Post reports that the plan has been derailed because of safety concerns. The DOE is now saying the program will kick off by next fall. In the meantime, the DOE will spend this year finding a vendor to provide the lockers and ensure that by next fall every single child will have a cell phone.

Marge Kolb, a CPAC member from Queens, sent Insideschools a report from the Queens meeting last week about the proposed changes to Gifted & Talented admissions procedures. Check out her report, then take a look at the Insideschools calendar for details about the two remaining public meetings.

Here’s one way to differentiate instruction for reluctant readers: bring in dogs, as the Bronx New School has done to provide reading partners for shy kids.

When I became president of LaGuardia’s student government this year, the first question I felt needed addressing was: Who gets to be on Student Government?

Since I joined SGO in sophomore year, students had been appointed to be representatives by putting in an application consisting of an essay, a recommendation, and their transcript. In most schools, this is an effective way of selecting representatives because there will not always be enough applicants to represent every grade, official class, etc. When I joined, there were about 25 SGO members and I was the only one from my grade. An application process for lower-level officials increases the number of students involved in their school.

However, there were also several requirements for aspiring SGO representatives that I disagreed with. First, applicants had to have a grade point average requirement of 85 or above to be considered. In addition, they had to have a clean dean’s record.

My problem with both of these requirements is that they exclude important members of the student community: those who have not succeeded academically and students who have not followed school rules. These students have just as much right to representation as any others. They are also affected by the school’s successes and more so by its failures.

For that reason, my fellow officers and I decided to repeal those requirements and since then, the number of SGO representatives has jumped from 46 to over 100, with greater representation of students from every class, major, race and gender.

As we increased in size, we also created a Speaker position. This person would run personnel of SGO and would work on recruiting new representatives, accepting and rejecting applications and helping new members find the committee that they would be best for.

We also created a new Student Opinion Committee: a committee of 15 SGO representatives whose sole job is to research how students feel about the goings-on of our school and then report their findings to the officers so that we could bring them to the school committees that we sit on: Attendance, Safety, and the SLT.

Yesterday I attended the third annual symposium of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, where I am a student. This year’s topic is “Equal Education Opportunity: What Now? Reassessing the Role of the Courts, the Law and School Policies after Seattle and CFE.”

The focus of the two-day symposium is primarily to discuss the role of litigation in promoting equal educational opportunity. This is particularly salient now given the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding voluntary school integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, as well as New York State’s recent decision to put $5.4 billion into New York City schools as a result of litigation from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

The morning session gathered four leading scholars for a moderated discussion about the impact of the Seattle and Louisville case. Amy Stuart Wells, a TC professor of sociology and education, began by providing a brief overview of the Supreme Court’s 185-page decision. The decision is remarkably complex but the essence of it is that schools may not use racial classifications in assigning children to school—even if these measures are carried out for the purpose of racial integration. Justice Kennedy proved to be the swing vote on the case, siding with the conservative bloc of judges on all parts of the decision except one (where he argued that there is a compelling state interest in racial balancing). However, because Kennedy’s decision is “remarkably unclear,” the future impact of the Supreme Court’s decision is still unclear, the panelists said.

Wells was joined by Ted Shaw of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; James Ryan, a law professor at the University of Virginia; and john a. powell of Ohio State University’s Kirwin Institute for Race and Ethnicity. Each provided interesting perspectives on the court’s decision but I am most concerned with the way that New York City fits into this picture.

Professor Ryan commented that racial integration is only on the agenda of about 1000 out of 16,000 school districts across the United States. In fact, half of all school districts in the country are either 90% white or 90% minority. What this means in practice is that half of school districts could not adopt racial integration plans even if they wanted to. Such is the case in New York City, where 85.6% of the student population during the 2005-2006 school year was classified as “other than white/non-Hispanic,” according to the Legal Defense Fund. As Shaw commented, “Desegregation is already a lost cause in many places like New York City.”

If desegregation really is a lost cause in a place like New York City, then the question obviously becomes “what now?” The panel provided little insight into this topic since the panelists seem focused on the next steps in litigation over racial integration and about what will be allowed in the era ushered in by the Supreme Court’s decision. Nonetheless, powell did stress that education is the crucible for democracy and that “true integration” has transformative effects. I presume powell would argue that even if New York City cannot achieve racial integration, the question of how we ensure equal educational opportunity for over 1 million children is salient—particularly with the next round of reforms underway.

Speaking of PSAs, check out this one for Advocates for Children:

Is there any idea that wild and crazy Roland Fryer won’t try? Last week the word was that he was arranging to give kids cell phones whose minutes would be dependent on school performance. This week’s plan, according to the Times, is to have famous people, such as Jay-Z and LeBron James, send poor New York City kids text messages telling them to stay in school. Really. Because a rap artist who dropped out of high school and a basketball player who skipped college for a multi-million-dollar professional contract are the perfect figures to teach kids about the long-term benefits of doing well in school.

Even getting past the obvious ironies, this plan just seems weird. I have questions about why the program will roll out in KIPP charter schools, where students already have someone at home who recognizes the value of doing well in school enough to enter them in the lottery and make sure they are in uniform for each 9-hour day. And I’m not sure Fryer needed a focus group to find out that “reaching [teenagers] through a concerted campaign of text messages or through the Internet was far more likely to be effective than a traditional billboard and television campaign” — any parent or 9-year-old could have told him that. Finally, I wonder whether it’s crossed Fryer’s mind that one way to increase “demand” for education would be to make school enjoyable — by bolstering the quality of teaching, reducing the number of tests kids must take, and encouraging creativity in the classroom.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong, necessarily, with what’s essentially a 21st-century version of this 1990 public service announcement. I just don’t get it.

The text messages will start transmitting in January. I can already imagine one unintended consequence that could be a boon for DOE officials and cash-strapped parents. If their cell phones start spewing motivational messages, many kids might feel incentivized to leave their phones at home.

In the midst of all of the report card madness, the Post remembered to catch up with some of the children receiving payments for their performance in school as part of the DOE’s new incentives initiative. The kids at MS 302 (percent of kids on grade level: 22; progress report grade: B) say they’re studying more and excited about school because of the money. “I was thinking if I studied more, I’d get all the answers right, and I’d probably get more money,” one girl told the Post.

I wouldn’t go so far as anti-testing activist Jane Hirschmann, who told the Post that the payment plan is “about the worst thing I’ve ever had,” but I do think the crude idea sounds even cruder from the mouths of children whose schools have obviously given up on teaching them to appreciate learning and studying for their own merits. At least there are “several students” who told the Post they have always worked hard and will continue doing so. It’s just too bad they are buried at the end of the article when the Post might have put into public record what motivated students think kids need to want to succeed.

Yesterday, the New York Times went after the progress reports in an editorial titled “Grading the Grades.” It said pretty much everything I think (and much of what I said the other day):

The new system “does a valuable service to students, and teachers, by holding schools accountable for both overall performance and for how much progress students make from one year to the next. But Mr. Bloomberg should ditch the simplistic and counterproductive A through F rating system. It boils down the entire shooting match to a single letter grade that does not convey the full weight of this approach and lends itself to tabloid headlines instead of a real look at a school’s problems.

Last week, I heard from a couple of people that I was too generous in my appraisal of the progress report initiative. I don’t know that I was. I said basically what the Times said — that the idea is a good one but the execution has big problems — and parent advocates were pleased with the Times editorial. Still, I admit that I am just getting up to speed on the theory and history behind the growth model of evaluating education, which is what the progress reports are based on. But the Times points out that while growth models are currently beloved by education researchers, they expect to see three years’ test scores factoring into the computations — and the DOE used only one to judge elementary and middle schools. In their haste to show results (or to push initiatives through before they can be challenged?), the chancellor and mayor have compromised their reforms and created what parent leader David Bloomfield suggests could be considered a “crazy experiment gone bad.”

Like Seth and the Times editorial board, I do think there is value to the growth model — as I said, parents should be able to know whether their schools are helping their kids make progress. And I still believe that a high-performing school may not score high on a growth model “improvement index.” If a well-designed measure showed that, schools and parents would be more likely to take the news to heart. It seems that an “improvement index” that factors into a school’s entire grade, if there must be one, at a much lower weight, would make more sense. I do think a single grade is reductive and distracting and unnecessary. At any rate, I agree with the Times that a “more subtle and flexible” school evaluation system is needed. Given our current leaders’ inability to handle even the most reasoned criticism, I’ll be pretty surprised if we see that.

Toss The Grades: For More Details, Try the Quality Review Reports

(If you can slog through them, that is)

When it comes to selecting a District 2 middle school for my fifth-grader, I have no intention of ruling a school in or out based on the latest letter-grade from the New York City Department of Education. The progress reports and accompanying grades are misleading, difficult to understand and culled from criteria that say much about the DOE’s priorities - improving test scores- and little about mine as a parent.

I had a hard time taking the letter grades seriously when I learned the Tribeca Learning Center, my son’s amazing elementary school, got a C.

And I would happily trade the A at Clinton, where my oldest son attends middle school, for smaller class sizes, a music program, a soccer team and a well stocked, staffed and open after-hours library.

So, I’m not disturbed that some of the fine schools we are seriously considering for next year — like IS 89 — received a D, or that the impressive Manhattan Academy of Technology, or MAT, got a C on its report card.

I sat down with the report cards this week to see what I might learn. The data and the methodology confused me, although it was clear that heavy penalties fell upon schools where test scores for the lowest performers failed to rise.

I switched to reading the quality reviews, like this one for MAT, and found much of the language in the quality reviews unfriendly to parents and filled with jargon: Does the average parent, for example, know what it means to “build and align capacity?” - or why that matters? Or care if “professional development activities are in place to address differentiated instruction and to create a seamless curriculum?”

Despite the jargon, overall, I found the quality reviews far more useful for parents, because they contained sections entitled: “What this school does well,” or “What this school needs to do to improve.”As for the report cards, here’s a tip I gleaned from my colleague Veronika Denes, a Ph.D. who directs research and program evaluation for the National Academy of Excellent Teaching at Teachers College and understands data better than anyone I know.

Veronika and colleagues spent more than a day trying to understand the methodology behind the reports, until they discovered online a simplifying tool that the DOE created for educators.

It’s 28 pages long.

Dear Chancellor Klein,

My name is Seth Pearce. I am a senior at LaGuardia High School and a member of the NYC Student Union, a citywide, student-run and -created education advocacy organization. I am writing to you to express both my support for your new school progress report program and my criticism of some of its parts.

At last week’s NYC Student Union meeting, students from schools around the city discussed the progress reports. Some students supported them and others didn’t. There was, however, a general agreement on the need for accountability in our schools. These progress reports bring added accountability and transparency to our city’s schools. They help give valuable information to our city’s parents. The most important benefit of the progress reports might be increased involvement from these parents who now have a clearer view of what’s going on their children’s schools.

While I support the principle of the progress reports, I also believe that the system needs revision. A large problem with your report card is the small amount of influence the Learning Environment section has on the overall score. Attendance is also as a major indicator of school performance. Students who go to bad schools will probably go to school less often and vice versa. If students are in the habit of going to school it is more likely that they will progress academically and proceed to the next level of education. Surveys should also play a larger role because parents, students and teachers have the most direct insight into the schools output.

I would also like to say that while standardized test scores deserve a place in the progress report they are given too much value in this system. While they provide some insight into student performance, they are inadequate and distract from the real business of education: teaching and learning. Emphasis on these tests also devalues the roles teacher and student. Furthermore, the need for constant progress to succeed in their progress reports is unrealistic for high performing schools and can actually distract them from the great work they are doing. In my mind the importance of progress for these purposes should be taken on the sliding scale determined by a school’s previous performance, e.g. progress would more important for low performing schools.

Thank you for taking the time to hear a student’s opinion. If you ever want to read some student commentary about our school system, check out the NYC Students Blog or stop by at one of our Monday meetings.

Have a nice day,

Seth Pearce
seth@nycstudents.org
http://nycstudents.org

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but work has picked up its pace and barely have time to breathe anymore!

I got a call last week informing me that I passed the first test to get into the small school in my neighborhood, so I was eligible for the final step to determine my admission: an interview. Unluckily, it was at 3 p.m. on a school day, and as I only get out of school at 2:10, I really had to get to the school fast.

So one cab ride and several anxious minutes later, I was sitting in a small lab room with a cheerful interviewer. I sat up straight, grinned, and gave it my all. By the end, I was pretty sure I had him hooked! If I get in to this school, I have decided that if I don’t get into the specialized high school of my choice, I’m pretty sure I’ll go there.

* * *

I just have a quick explanation for my readers out there. You may have realized that I have avoided naming any of the schools in my posts, and there is a reason behind that: Because this is a public blog, I wouldn’t really enjoy having my chances at a certain school lowered based on something that I wrote about it. By not naming the schools, I kind of have an “Invisibility Cloak” that allows me to say whatever I want about any school and not get judged on it.

In my last post I discussed how the first step to getting a grant is identifying what the biggest “grantable” needs are at your school. Once you’ve decided the priorities at your school, the next step in finding grant funding is identifying the funders who are right for your project.

What funding category does the project fit into? Is it Arts–a visiting playwright, poet or printmaker, a spring musical, trips to museums? Is it Literacy–visiting historical sites and then writing about them, or buying biographies for classroom libraries? Is your grant for a Capital Expense–permanent physical improvement to a space, like planting a garden or renovating a community room? Is it Environmental Stewardship–studying where city water comes from, or connecting science curriculum with local parks?

There are often different funding organizations to help schools in each of these categories, and it’s easier to find them if you know which category your grant fits into.

Last month, the New York City Student Union officially launched the NYC Students Blog, the first ever student-run blog about the NYC education system. In doing so they have joined the many teacher blogs; organizational blogs, such as this one; and the NYC Public School Parents Blog to contribute to the discussion on many of the important issues in our City’s schools.

Ashu Kapoor, a senior blogger from a Queens small school:

For too long, students have been left out of the decisions made about our education. This blog will begin the task of giving students a real voice in our schools. Students are most affected by the successes and failures of our schools and deserve some say in the policies made about them.

The NYC Students Blog currently features nine student bloggers who represent every borough and many different types of schools. So far these students have tackled issues such as student government organizations, the Contracts for Excellence debate, recycling efforts in New York City’s schools, and changes in sex education around the city.

I’ll continue to post the highlights from the NYC Students Blog (as well as my own original content) here at Insideschools, but if you get the chance please check us out at nycstudents.blogspot.com (and blogroll us if you feel like it!) . We’re really excited to contribute a student voice to the issues that so affect us and look forward to working with the rest of the education blogosphere to continue these conversations and improve New York City’s schools.

Check out the new articles up on Insideschools: we have coverage of Monday night’s G&T public meeting; new advice columns from our college counselor, psychologist, and Judy; and, of course, lots of new school reviews.

Plus, take our poll on the progress reports and G&T proposal!

Eduwonkette is spending the week trying to crunch the numbers on the progress reports and so far, she’s found some interesting information about the racial breakdown of schools and scores and about the characteristics, such as the proportion of experienced teachers and the percentage of students receiving part-time special education services, that don’t appear to relate to schools’ grades.

I’ll be paying attention, as always, to Eduwonkette’s analysis and what parents have to say, but here’s my take on the progress reports: It looks like most crummy schools got mediocre or bad grades, and lots of great schools got good grades. The many outliers suggest that you’d be foolish to treat these grades as anything more than they are — one more piece of information, among many, to use when looking for a school, and an opportunity to take a look at how your school is helping all kids, or not.

The grades could encourage families who might seek out schools and programs outside their zone to consider their neighborhood schools, which would be good for those schools. But with real choice an illusion except in a very few scenarios, I’m wondering what impact the grades will have on parents. Most schools’ reputations are pretty entrenched, although I can imagine that the grades might affect how fast up-and-coming schools up and come. Maybe, as Ms. Frizzle says, the grades are best left as a tool for schools.

I think the grades do say something — about how hard schools are pushing their kids — that no other available data say. Schools that are moving their kids forward despite starting at a disadvantage should be recognized for doing so. And schools that are “coasting” because their kids are middle-class and school-ready should know that that’s not enough.

But with 85 percent of the grades based on test scores, it’s only improvement on test scores that will count. It’s clear that pretty much the only way for schools with B’s to get A’s next year is to improve kids’ test scores, often only marginally. NYC Public School Parents has noted a few schools, such as IS 318 in Brooklyn and IS 289 in Manhattan, that have already said their lower-than-desired grades won’t make them add more test prep. But many other schools may make another decision, to their students’ possible detriment. And I can imagine that at top-rated schools, glee will soon give way to anxiety as administrators realize that to preserve their grades, they’ll have to improve upon already excellent performance.

A comprehensive school grading system that looks at student improvement is itself an improvement over looking at straight percentages of students scoring at various levels. But issuing a single grade based on improvement and test scores is reductive and demeaning to teachers — that’s a position I’ve heard from many people. And it drives to the sidelines discussion of other important features of school performance: has the school worked to increase parent involvement? has the principal instituted a more democratic structure that’s keeping teachers in the school? is a new arts program engaging students who feel alienated by too much testing?

I think the new grades make Insideschools’ qualitative reviews and parent comments even more vital, and I hope parents aren’t so distracted by their school’s grade that they lose sight of what schools should do to get kids excited about learning.

At this point so much has been said all over the Web about the progress report grades that I don’t know what I can add. For once, the Times, the Post, the Daily News, and the Sun were editorially united; they all critiqued the plan by identifying good schools with low grades and lousy schools with high grades. Parents at desirable schools that received low grades are up in arms and the DOE is threatening failing schools with “consequences” that could include closure or principal replacement — but as the Times notes this morning, despite the chatter, it’s not at all clear right now what the grades really mean for parents or even for schools.

Here are a few especially sensible comments I’ve read about the grades. In the comments, feel free to nominate your own candidates for the Non-Hysterical School Grade Analysis Award.

On the New York Times City Room blog, a teacher writes,

This system for rating schools is the most complete and fair way they have ever been rated by the city or state. … Grading schools may help the city understand how its educators are faring at the difficult task of bringing the thousands of under-educated students in NYC up to grade level. It does not, however, give parents much relevant information about what school is actually best for their child.

A recent PS 87 parent writes,

I think it’s great that the administration is assessing schools based on various criteria. These evaluations can supplement reputation, impressions based on visiting, and test scores alone for judging the quality of a school. And they’re not only a useful resource for helping parents to evaluate schools–they should help schools like P.S. 87 identify ways of improving. On the other hand, the emphasis on “consquences” for poorly performing schools is disheartening. Are these schools supposed to be scared into performing better? Shutting down a weak school will only increase the overall quality of NYC’s education if weak administrators, teachers, and students disappear. But that doesn’t happen–they are simply moved elsewhere!

And one more from the New York Times:

Why is this new grading system the “linchpin” of the Bloomberg/Klein administration? … The schools, through NCLB, already are measured for Adequate Yearly Progress. So, why millions and millions more that could have been spent IN the classroom, to come up with this incredibly flawed methodology?

Louise at Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn writes,

What does it mean?

Something and nothing. You know your school and you know whether it’s any good or not. No report card score is going to tell you anything that you don’t already know.

Ms. Frizzle, a blogger who teaches at a middle school that received an “A” grade, writes,

One thing that sticks out in my head is that there is supposedly a computer program designed to help schools analyze their results to determine which actions are likely to achieve the greatest improvements in the data. (The idea is to prevent situations where principals throw a ton of resources at a problem identified in the school environment survey, improve that result, but find out later that because of the weighting it made very little difference in the overall school report). So you need a program to help you analyze the analysis? That seems like a waste of resources to me. Find a way to report data so that it is clear and comprehensible and paints a picture of what needs to change. Otherwise, it’s just more numbers.

How about some non-G&T, non-progress report, uncontroversial news to get us through the day? Four students from the city’s public schools have been named finalists in the prestigious Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology; each will receive scholarships of up to $1,000. One finalist attends Stuyvesant, and the other three go to Francis Lewis High School in Queens. Nine other city kids were named semifinalists — from Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Hunter, NEST, and Midwood. The kids have one more round to make it through before the national finals, held at the end of November at NYU; the top prize is a $100,000 scholarship. New York City hasn’t had any winners since 2003, when the grand prize winner was a Stuyvesant student whose research focused on the biochemistry of memory in the brain.

More soon from last night’s Gifted & Talented public meeting, but I just wanted to draw attention to one thing I’ve been meaning to note that finally got addressed — a little — in the very last question, at 9:30 p.m. The Bracken School Readiness Assessment, which students will take (along with the OLSAT) to get into gifted programs, is billed by its publisher as a tool that “helps determine if a child may have an underlying language disorder that requires further evaluation.” I’m not a psychometrician, but a test that looks for delays doesn’t sound like the ideal tool to identify giftedness. Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning Marcia Lyles said last night that the BSRA will be used to look for disorders as well as giftedness in 2008-09, when it will be administered to all kindergartners.

So I’m wondering if the expansion of access in the new gifted proposal (especially since the 95th percentile cut off is sure to shrink the actual number of seats in many places) isn’t really a way to target students for extra help (a good thing) and/or to establish a baseline from which to generate data about younger kids’ performance and improvement to pour into the school report cards.

If Gifted and Talented admissions is on your radar, you probably don’t need any reminding that tonight is the first public meeting to discuss the chancellor’s new G&T admissions proposal. But in case you’ve been overcome by the progress report news today, here’s your reminder. 6-9 p.m. at Fashion Industries High School. See you there. Map.

You can check out an excel file with all of the schools’ grades over at the DOE’s website. Fifty schools got F’s, and 23 high schools’ grades have not yet been finalized. (At Pissed Off Teacher’s school, the original grade is being revisited because the principal complained.) New schools that haven’t yet graduated a class also don’t have grades.

Read the DOE’s explanation of how the grades were calculated and then let us know what you think of the rankings. Do you see any surprises?

B

What does this grade mean?
Your [The Department of Education’s Report Card program’s] overall score ranks within the 45th-85th percentile among accountability strategies for an incomparably large school system. Although this is a step in the right direction for accountability and is necessary in a system this large, some of the factors you grade schools on are a little misguided.

School Environment- Out of 15%
A large problem with your report card is the meager amount of influence this section has on the overall score. Attendance should be seen as a major indicator of school performance. Students who go to bad schools will probably go to school less often and vice versa. If students are in the habit of going to school it is more likely that they will progress academically and proceed to the next level of education. Surveys should also play a larger role because parents, students, and teachers have great insight into schools’ output.

Student Performance- Out of 30%
High-stakes testing is not a great way of measuring results. Test-taking requires an entirely different skill-set from learning. Its emphasis also reduces the amount of actual teaching and learning that takes place in our schools. However, it is still the most feasible way of assessing student performance and deserves to be a factor (albeit a smaller one) in a school’s overall grade.

Student Progress- Out of 55%
Measuring student progress is a toughie and the McGraw Hill period assessments are a great way of doing it. Maybe with ARIS you can track a student’s grades and how they’ve improved or worsened over time. Also: Tracking a student’s progress from 8th to 9th grade is ridiculous and impossible. Puberty and the transition to high school make expecting all students (especially boys) to progress academically is unrealistic. After being a really good student in middle school it took me until my sophomore year to really get back on track. This section should bear less weight.

Additional Credit
I have to agree with Errol Louis on this one. It is a step in the right direction. Hopefully these assessments will show over time that principal empowerment is a good idea (as it has been at LaGuardia). Accountability is necessary. These report cards help spread the information to the public and let parents get a better picture on how their school is doing. However, the factors of assessment and their weights need heavy revision. Also, the system of relative letter grades will help the DOE and the other education wonks out there learn more about the benefits of competition between public schools in a system as large as New York’s.

Joel Klein’s new report card system gets a B. It’s an interesting and well-intentioned concept but like Joel Klein’s other programs, it is most definitely a work in progress.

It’s a big week for the city’s public schools — the DOE is releasing their report card grades. The grades, based on quality reviews, test scores, and student, parent and teacher surveys, range from A to F; a top grade can mean more money, while a failing grade — assured for 15 percent of schools — could cost principals their jobs. Some schools, such as IS 289 in Manhattan, are getting low scores despite high performance, according to a New York Times article, and others are getting high scores despite low student performance and bad reputations.

Gotham Gazette has a brief roundup of opinion, ranging from Daily News columnist Errol Lewis’ defense of the grades as “exactly what parents need to know” to Diane Ravitch’s criticism of them as “simplistic and misleading.” And while principals certainly care about their schools’ grades — after all, their jobs may be on the line — I think Clara Hemphill is right when she says in the Times that a grade alone are unlikely to change parents’ opinions about schools — especially when the grade doesn’t jive with a school’s reputation.

Yesterday, thousands of city kids were pulled from class to receive and distribute flowers as part of an initiative to draw attention to the reason why more than 80,000 taxicabs now bear Technicolor flowers on their hoods. The car-art project, part of Garden in Transit, celebrates 100 years of taxis by showcasing flower decals painted by the city’s children.

But so many people have been confused about the intentions behind the flowered cabs — several have told the group they think the flowers are meant to “raise money for something somehow related to the 1960s,” Garden in Transit told the Times — that the group decided to launch a new campaign to clarify the first. Unfortunately, it might not have been any more successful: teacher Ms. Frizzle wrote on her blog, “I wonder if anyone took a moment to picture what two dozen 11-year-olds would DO with flowers for the last hour of the day while I was ostensibly teaching science class? … I grant that I am not 100% sure WHY we got carnations today, and possibly it could have been handled better within the school, but still! Really!”

If you were paying attention to the news over the summer, you may have heard that Information Technology High School in Queens was constructed in an old warehouse on a toxic site. The DOE insisted that its tests showed the site is safe for students and teachers, but lawyers were seeking confirmation by independent scientists, and families were worried about their kids’ safety.

Now Fox 5, which brought the InTech story to light, has put together a report about the “three most toxic school sites” in New York City. According to an independent environmental expert, Beacon High School on the Upper West Side, Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics in East Harlem, and PS 156 in the Bronx are all sitting on top of potentially dangerous levels of various industrial chemicals. The DOE says all three sites are safe. Public advocates are pushing for legislation that would require the city to submit leased sites to public review — the law already requires this of sites the city owns — but the Bloomberg administration opposes such a regulation.

Update: We’ve heard that a retraction from Fox may be in the works about the Beacon site. From our source: “Fox won’t do a retraction until the investigation is complete … but the brownfield site was 2 blocks away and … the EPA or whatever already gave the okey dokey” to the site. Beacon families, you can relax. No word on whether this is the case for the other schools in the original report.

Update 11/7: No retraction thus far from Fox 5 itself, but the expert quoted on the segment has issued a letter that says Beacon is safe. “There is no indication that any contamination resulting at the [nearby toxic site] is threatening the Beacon School due to the rigorous ’source-removal’ clean up that was undertaken,” the expert writes. Phew.

Jacquie Wayans, a school reviewer for Insideschools, appeared on the Brian Lehrer Show yesterday to discuss kids who are “talent rich and resource poor.” Wayans and her two fellow panelists, a representative from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and the managing director of Uncommon Schools, which supports several charter schools in the city, discussed the special challenges facing low-income gifted children. Wayans described her own school experience and that of her kids, who attended TAG, a selective school that has many low-income students. Listen to the entire show online; her segment begins around minute 14:30.