Last night I went to the first of five public hearings held by the DOE about the proposed new system for handling pre-K and kindergarten admission. I was surprised that there were no more than about three dozen parents there but the DOE did just announce the policy at the end of last week.

Read Insideschools’ overview for background on the proposal. I learned many more details last night:

• If the proposal goes through (and the “if” here really means “when”), all pre-K registration activities thus far this year will have been rendered moot. Keep going to open houses, but if principals promise you a slot or ask for your commitment to their school, remember that it probably won’t matter. And you’ll have to pick up and return a pre-K application, even if you think you’ve already done that.

• A large part of completing the application will be trying to figure out your likelihood of admission to the schools you list. If your zoned school has a popular pre-K program, you’ll probably want to list it first, because if you list it second, all the seats could be taken by other zoned children before you’re even considered. As Marty Barr of OSEPO said last night, it would make sense to try to get into a program outside of your zone only when the program you want is large and doesn’t usually have that many people applying which does not describe the most desirable programs, of course.

• Kids with IEPs will continue to be placed by the Committee on Preschool Special Education their parents won’t have to fill out an application.

• Within each priority level, siblings will receive preference for admission. So after all the zoned children who rank a pre-K program first are admitted, the sibling of a child enrolled in that school from outside the zone would get priority over other out-of-zone students for admission.

• The DOE says that pre-K programs at community-based organizations will follow the same calendar, so if you want a back-up plan should you not get into any public school pre-K program, you will want to apply to your top-choice CBO programs in March as well.

• Everyone in pre-K this fall and afterward will have to reapply for kindergarten, including families in their zoned school who want to stay there. A child who gets into an out-of-zone or unzoned school for pre-K will have no assurance or even priority to be allowed to stay there for kindergarten.

• The DOE has no idea how it will deal with seats that open up due to children leaving the city, enrolling in CBO-run pre-K programs, or choosing private schools. Barr said OSEPO has considered a second round of applications (at this, parents last night booed) or assigning children on an “over-the-counter” basis.

• The proposal has no built-in appeals process, but OSEPO Director Liz Sciabarra seemed open to adding one. In 2009, if you are assigned to a school for kindergarten that doesn’t work for your family, you can apply to transfer. Barr and Sciabarra said the transfer process will remain the same.

The new process may wind up being simpler and fairer, as the DOE says it will be, but it certainly does change the game this year for many families entering the system. What should be the major takeaways for parents? First, schools that have accepted kids on an individual basis will not be able to do so any more; principals will no longer have any discretion to issue variances. In addition, the process is heavily weighted toward keeping kids in their zoned schools. The way to give yourself the best chance of getting into your first-choice pre-K program and kindergarten in 2009 is to move into that school’s zone.

What’s your take on this proposal? Let Insideschools know in the comments, and then let the DOE know by emailing ES_Enrollment@schools.nyc.gov. You can also attend one of the three remaining public hearings; see our calendar for details on dates and locations.

With troubling news about school budgets percolating (more on this later), let’s focus this morning on the city’s exceptional students. Four students at Stuyvesant the most at a single school and one at Bronx Science were among the 40 national semifinalists in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search. Kids at MS 318 in Brooklyn beat national chess champs Murrow High School for the city chess title. And kids at IS 98 in the South Bronx take LEGO robotics seriously, as do their peers at 59 other Bronx schools; they’re currently raising money to travel to Japan to compete.

Last week, the DOE released results of the Principal Satisfaction Survey that it said proved that principals are happy as clams. Of course, we know the truth is a little more nuanced, and as Diane Ravitch noted after speaking to a number of principals at an event, many principals were hesitant to express their true feelings because they feared retribution; officially, the survey was anonymous, but it was distributed and collected via DOE email addresses.

Still, looking past the sunny picture the DOE painted, Insideschools reporter Vanessa Witenko saw some more unsettling results. In particular, she noticed that only 28 percent of the principals who responded to the survey (who represent 70 percent of all principals) said they were at all satisfied by the way the central student enrollment office handles enrollment of kids with special needs. Check out her full report on principals’ dissatisfaction with special ed enrollment.

Tonight, supporters of the Khalil Gibran International Academy are holding a “an evening of celebration and support” for the school, which continues to be troubled a semester after it opened. Earlier this month, the DOE finally announced a permanent replacement for original principal Debbie Almontaser. This week, the Post reports that shorted in the chaos of the opening months were the school’s 10 students with special needs, who don’t have a dedicated teacher and who apparently have not been receiving any of the services mandated by the IEPs. Class size is also around 30 students with only one teacher in the room, the Post reports, and kids in special education and general education alike are having a hard time learning. For more details about the event tonight, see the Insideschools calendar.

Hey everyone! It’s been quite some time since I last blogged, mainly because all has been quiet on the high school frontier for a while now. I am currently waiting for the results of the specialized high school exam, which are due back next week (somewhere around Feb. 6), to tell me whether or not I made it into my first-choice specialized high school.

At the same time that I’m pretty jazzed about those results, I’m also anticipating the results of my application to non-specialized high schools. At this point, I will, quite frankly, be happy no matter where I get in. I have confidence that I made it into the small school in my neighborhood, and my excitement concerning acceptance to that school has only risen since I finally decided to put it first. Although I’ve heard rumors that it will be backbreakingly fast-paced, I’ve also heard wonderful things about the rich curriculum and able staff.

My one concern is that, if I do somehow make it into both the specialized high school and the regular school, which will I choose? Both schools are overachieving and will undoubtedly get me many places in my future career as a student, but I would have to make certain sacrifices in order to succeed in both places. One will allow for shorter travel time, but more club participation; the other, immense travel time, but possibly less competition among the student body. Only the test results (and some good thinking time!) will tell.

Would you wait in the cold at 4:30 a.m. to sign up for more classes with your elementary school science teacher? That’s what parents from PS 261 in Brooklyn did this past week when Carmelo Piazza, known in the neighborhood as “Carmelo the Science Fellow,” opened registration for the 8-week summer program he runs. The New York Times reports that parents started lining up around 4:30 a.m., and the entire summer session was full less than 3 hours after registration opened at 9 a.m. Piazza sounds indefatigable (and possibly insane), teaching a full schedule, running after-school classes at his neighborhood science joint, and entertaining at weekend birthday parties. The city needs more teachers like him.

It always surprises me how my fellow students always seem to take much more moderate and pragmatic positions on many of today’s more controversial education issues than I would expect.

At last week’s New York City Student Union meeting, the issue that came up was mayoral control of NYC schools, which Albany can either reinstate or let sunset in 2009. While much of what we hear on the issue from other members of the education community (parents, teachers, activists) is outright condemnation, most students were supportive of the idea of mayoral control.

I’ve been on the fence about the issue for a while now, but after hearing my fellow students arguments, I am convinced that mayoral control is not the devil after all.

For starters mayoral control assures that at least someone is responsible and accountable for the success and failure of our education system. It makes education an important issue in the municipal election with both the largest voter turnout and the greatest amount of press coverage and it also serves to keep education in the news because there are always reporters surrounding the mayor.

Mayoral control also centralizes education giving some hope for equal standards citywide and the possibility of important sweeping change.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe it needs some changes. I just took my US History Regents and the idea of checks and balances comes to mind. Since the president has to get his Secretary of Education approved by Congress, why shouldn’t the mayor have to get the chancellor approved by the City Council? Makes sense right? I would also advocate that a Chancellor Selection Board be appointed comprising of teachers, parents, students and administrators to publicly review candidates for the position.

Up to now, most of what I have heard as criticism of mayoral control seems more to be criticism of what Bloomberg and Klein have done to our schools. What we have seen with the current Bloomberg-Klein Complex is a complete denial of some of the most important issues in education, especially class size. They have also shown a pattern of disrespect to many of the constituents of our education system and filled the department with bureaucrats, lawyers and businessmen instead of educators.

We know that we need a chancellor who has experience as an educator in the classroom and in the schools. We need one who understands the delicate processes of teaching and learning. So I say, instead of drifting back to decentralization and the disorganization and confusion that comes with it, why not demand a mayor who will give us just that, who will pledge to put an educator in charge of our schools. This in my belief is one of the biggest positives of mayoral control is that we the people can make this statement.

In 2009, Albany will have a tough decision to make. Mayoral control is an extreme system. It is likely to be very good or very bad because under it change comes much more easily. It does not tend towards moderation. However, in our current state of education, in which way too few of us students graduate and fewer leave our schools ready to support ourselves and become able participants in our democracy, we need a system that will enable change to occur. What we have had is not working. We need new solutions, new ideas. Mayoral control is the most effective way to implement the changes we seek in our schools.

So the question before Albany is this: Do we want to abandon a system that has such a potential for good, just because it hasn’t been used as such in the past six years?
–Cross-posted at NYC Students Blog

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling this summer raised our hopes that the city’s schools would finally receive equitable and more adequate funding, but it’s turning out not to be quite the banner year for school funding that some had hoped. First, Governor Spitzer reduced the amount of new money flowing to the city’s schools. Now, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a $324 million reduction in the city’s education budget, representing a 1.3 percent cut.

According to the Post, Bloomberg sees the cuts as an inducement for principals to spend more efficiently. Speaking as the business leader who amassed a fortune of nearly $12 billion (or $324 million, 37 times), Bloomberg said,

“I’m sorry. You can always cut 1.3 percent. In fact, it’s healthy to go and say let’s cut a little bit and force the principals and the teachers and the administrators to say, ‘Is this program worth it?’”

Bloomberg’s sentiment is, of course, offensive to principals and teachers and administrators who are struggling to provide high-quality educations under difficult circumstances and who certainly don’t think anything they’re doing is worthless (except maybe confiscating cell phones and administering standardized tests under DOE orders). And more than that, it’s offensive to children for whom every art class, field trip, and ounce of enrichment means something, even if those expenditures don’t always immediately translate into improved “performance.”

Elected leaders often have to make difficult decisions that adversely affect their constituents. We understand. But they don’t have to sound happy about it.

If you care about the mayor’s proposed 8th grade promotion policy, tonight’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting is your first chance to make your voice heard. (You’ll also be able to speak out on the promotion policy at a series of public hearings in February and March; see the Insideschools calendar for details on dates and times.) 6 p.m. at Tweed; arrive a little early if you want to sign up to speak. Map.

We all know that overzealous security guards can be a problem in schools, but I didn’t think the issue extended to kindergartens. Apparently it does. When a 5 year old at PS 81 in Queens had a tantrum which presumably had something to do with him being 5 years old a security guard handcuffed him and called an ambulance to take him to a local psych ward, the Daily News reports today. Of course, there may be more to this story than the Daily News is saying, but the school and the DOE aren’t disputing what happened, and now a kid feels unwelcome at his neighborhood public school. This story is just one more reminder that the city’s schools need personnel who are trained to work with children, not criminals.

When choosing a middle school, what happens after hours is critical in a city where space is scarce and fields are threatened.

Parents mulling middle school options spend a great deal of time comparing math and science programs, class size and school philosophies. They also can’t help noticing the wide disparity of sports and after-school programs and activities

Extras like robotics and rock bands can be big factors for working parents. Who wouldn’t prefer having their kids in fun, structured activities in school instead of hanging out in city parks, unsupervised?

Kids care a lot about these offerings as well. My 5th-grade son is absolutely swayed by the promise of track, soccer and swim teams.

After school sports are even more critical at a time when the few athletic fields available to New York City kids are threatened by politics - as at Randall’s Island - or by development, as at Pier 40, where a huge rally is planned this Sunday at noon to save the fields from development.

So far, no middle school we’ve toured can compete with the offerings at M.A.T. in Chinatown, detailed in a great piece last week in the Downtown Express. The promise of the long-awaited community center that will be available free for all students at IS 289 will also be welcome.

But only M.A.T. offers a climbing wall (a great metaphor for middle schoolers, who literally climb them anyway) along with a surfing club and a tremendous track and field program. John De Matteo, the school’s ambitious athletic director, is building a really impressive program where 65 percent of all students participate in a sport.

To his credit, De Matteo has already met with the principal of Tompkins Square Middle School to explain how M.A.T. can support 16 sports and 38 teams. He plans to meet with other middle school principals to talk about how they can model their programs after M.A.T. as well.

De Matteo is happy to share his insights because he is so convinced that it makes a huge difference in the lives of middle schoolers.

“I believe that being on a structured sports team which teaches children how to work with their teammates, build sportsmanship, build community and character and motivate to improve grades will be one of the most important opportunities for our children to have,” he says.

Any advice M.A.T. can offer middle school principals will be a positive step for all New York City public schools. Space, money and scheduling issues all interfere with the creation of after school programs. Just last week, hundreds of kids and parents crowded into PS 3 in the West Village, pointing out the critical need for more schools in Chelsea and the Village. Kids wondered why luxury condos are cropping up everywhere when schools are not.

There are not enough good public schools in the city. We also need fields, after school programs and sports. Parents are going to have to make a lot of noise to make sure we get them.

In the meantime, let’s offer support and encouragement to the educators and visionaries who are creating, pushing and sharing programs that mean so much to our kids.

Next year, kids at 10-15 schools will have more time in school if all goes according to plan for The After School Corporation, which at the chancellor’s urging has bought into a national push to give up on traditional school hours.

According to the Daily News, TASC is planning a pilot in which kids might go to school through the summer or until 6 p.m. daily in an effort to extend the amount of time they’re learning. In addition to having more time for academics (and, presumably, testing), TASC President Lucy Friedman told the Daily News the new schedule will allow schools to preserve art, music, and sports programs that have been pushed out during the regular school day. TASC says the pilot will honor the teachers’ contract, although it’s difficult to imagine how it could, and it can’t be a good sign that UFT President Randi Weingarten has already called the pilot “another one of these secretive plots.”

The Daily News notes that the idea for the pilot germinated in conversations with Chancellor Klein. Nationally, there is a growing movement to extend school time; the National Center on Time and Learning was launched in October (with some funding from Klein favorite the Broad Foundation), and the issue even got discussed during a Democratic presidential debate this fall. Many charter schools already have longer school schedules.

Looks like parents at PS 40 and PS 116 in Manhattan are taking the advice of Robert Pondiscio and the legions of parents who would do the same thing if they could find enough allies and boycotting some of the testing mandated this year by the DOE. The parents are upset that their kids were selected to take “field tests” to help testmakers devise future exams, in addition to having to take the real state tests in math and ELA and diagnostic tests to generate progress report data.

I don’t think [the field test is] going to be a strain on any particular child, but it replaces classroom teaching, and it is a waste of everybody time, PS 40 parent told the Times. But according to Louise at Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, individual kids are feeling the strain of one test after another. Louise, who says she’s sick of testing, wrote yesterday that her 5th-grade daughter became distressed last week that the following day she would have to take “what seemed a sudden standardized math test that her teacher told me had something to do with appraising teacher performance.” Louise asks, as did the Manhattan parents boycotting the tests, “Why put a kid through this kind of anxiety?” Perhaps Louise should spearhead a boycott at PS 321. I’m sure she’d have no trouble finding followers.

Who knew I was already right when I hypothesized two weeks ago that the DOE was hoping to change the way teachers are evaluated? Well, besides Eduwonkette, who left a comment telling me so, and at least 140 principals whose teachers are already being judged according to their students’ test scores in an initiative so top secret that even the teachers don’t know about it? Very few people, it appears, according to the New York Times.

In the already-underway experiment, which the Times was the first to report, the test score gains of students at 140 schools will be used to judge their teachers’ success. The DOE is setting “predicted gains” for teachers based on their students’ skills, experiences, and backgrounds and then crunching the numbers to see if the teachers meet those goals. The DOE told the Times, which broke the story, that it doesn’t plan to use the results to make hiring or firing decisions about individual teachers. But Chris Cerf, who apparently has been deputized to talk up the program, said the results could be one factor used in those decisions, and that ultimately making the results public (a la the progress reports) would reward good teachers and put pressure on bad ones. Certainly, the DOE must be interested in providing more ammunition for the teacher firing squads assembled earlier this year.

Naturally, the UFT’s Randi Weingarten, who has backed down in her opposition to other controversial plans, including the Teacher Performance Unit, sounds angry about this one, telling the Times that she and the city disagree on whether results from this pilot or its expansion could be used under the teachers’ contract to make hiring or firing decisions. (On the other hand, the Times says the UFT has known about the experiment for four months, but we haven’t heard any complaints until now.)

The initiative also appears to undercut the little agency afforded teachers in determining how performance pay is distributed this year. I’m pretty sure that we don’t know how many of the schools included in the performance pay pilot elected to distribute their earnings across the whole faculty rather than to individual teachers, but I think it’s safe to guess that’s what happened in most schools. Now the DOE is doing the divisive, problematic work its teachers declined to do.

The Times predicts a battle this summer between the DOE and the UFT over the experiment results. Let’s hope Randi Weingarten (or, potentially, her successor) is up for the fight. The DOE is abusing test score data, which aren’t meant for this kind of crunching, and keeping teachers in the dark about how they’re being evaluated. Regardless of the quality of the research (though even that is questionable  Eduwonkette wonders whether the experiment is ethical given that many of the research subjects don’t know they are part of an experiment at all), the way the DOE has gone about this one is just not right.

Speaking of scaling down big plans, it looks like the state will be giving the city’s schools $100 million less this year than originally planned in new money. Citing budget constraints, the state is backing down on the amount of money, secured as a result of the 13-year Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, awarded to the city’s schools. Yesterday at the middle school equity rally, CFE Director Geri Palast said, “Committed funding increases for education must be immunized from claims of tight budgets and economic downturns.” Unfortunately for kids in New York City and other communities around the state, that immunity doesn’t exist.

The DOE makes a lot of noise when it rolls out a new initiative but it does a good job of staying quiet when it scales them back. The Post reported this past weekend that the science test planned for grades 3 and 6 will not be offered this year after all, at least not for the vast majority of middle and high schools. And science proficiency won’t be a consideration in promotion decisions as the DOE last year suggested it would be. According to the Post, the DOE now plans to start testing all students in science next year.

What’s the reason for the delay? Apparently, the DOE found it didn’t have time to train teachers adequately in the new citywide science curriculum; the Post has quotes from a couple of anonymous teachers who report having “boxes of junk” in their classrooms but no idea how to use their contents. The DOE also says it needs further field testing to devise a fair test.

Inadequate training for teachers and a flawed test sound like good arguments for slowing down implementation of the science test schedule. I’m just surprised that the DOE listened to those arguments after rolling out initiatives far more half-baked than this one. And for those who saw the science test as a sign that the DOE would no longer tolerate schools spending all of their instructional time working on skills tested on the math and English state tests, the delay is certainly disappointing. Let’s hope that schools haven’t been trained too well on teaching only to tests and still make use of the new science curriculum.

With so much to worry about on a daily basis gifted and talented screening, middle school admissions, the barrage of standardized testing  it can be easy to lose sight of the larger reality that schools can help move society toward racial and economic equality  and that they also can hold society back. To honor Martin Luther King Day today, the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice is holding a rally to call for improvements to middle-grades education, when black and Latino students fall behind most. Other groups and institutions are holding Martin Luther King Day events around the city as well. Tomorrow it’s back to school and work for all of us, but today we ought to step back and think about the big picture.

More details are emerging on the mayor’s new plan to “end social promotion” in 8th grade. According to the New York Times, the 8th grade rules are “stricter” than those already in place in grades 3, 5, and 7 because students will have to pass all of their core subjects as well as score a 2 or higher on state tests. Last year, the Times reports, about a quarter of 8th graders failed to meet these standards.

No one’s suggesting that a quarter of 8th graders will really have to stay in middle school, but as I noted yesterday, summer schools are sure to expand in 2009, when the first set of kids affected by the new policy finishes 8th grade. The Daily News notes that Chancellor Klein plans to head off “mass flunkings” by putting in place stronger intervention strategies earlier in middle school but without new funds to support those strategies, it’s not clear how schools with lots of struggling students will be able to offer intensive support to their weakest students and at the same time scale up their advanced offerings, as a policy announced last summer is requiring them to do.

Advocates for Children Director Kim Sweet told the Daily News, “We’re very concerned that kids are being stuck in the eighth grade who can’t meet the requirements to graduate currently and are already over-age and unable to get into high school.” The new policy could exacerbate that problem.

Fortunately, the Times has some small consolation for advocates and over-age kids, noting, “Officials said it was unlikely that eighth graders who had already been held back twice would be retained a third time.”

What is our role, the students’ role, in our society?

As it stands now we are the constant object of the education discussion sentence. My English teacher told me (and mind you, this was last year… in my junior year of high school) that a simple sentence contains three parts: the subject or actor, the verb or action, and the object or that which is acted upon.

As in: “The Department of Education (that’s the subject) puts (the verb) children (the object) first (I guess that’s an adjective).”

In the American education debate, we are acted upon by many subjects: The Department of Education, which treats us like products, numbers that need to be manipulated so that it can look good; the city, which treats us as criminals who need to be babysat by the NYPD for a couple of hours a day; and our teachers, whom people assume can snap their fingers and turn us into brilliant astrophysicists ready to herald in a new age of American economic glory.

In debates about the issues, class size for example, we always hear about how current conditions make teaching impossible. What about learning? Do you think it’s any easier to learn in a class of 34 than it is to teach? Since when has learning become a passive action? Just because it contains no plosive sounds and seems to flow off the tongue a bit easier doesn’t mean it’s any smoother of a process. Learning is not an exact science. It takes hard work, intense concentration and in today’s schools, quite a bit of luck.

If our education systems are truly trying to put “Children First,” then it is time for us to become the subject of our education. People like Joel Klein need to stop asking, “Are our teachers teaching?” and instead ask, in the words of the Bard, “Is our children learning?”

To refocus this picture, we students need to take a more active role in our schools. That is the key mission of the New York City Student Union, a citywide, student-founded, student-run organization. Since its creation in 2006, the union’s goals have been to act as a powerful collective voice for New York City’s students, to give students a say in the decisions made about them, and to provide communication between students from all over the City.

Each Monday, these students from small schools, impact schools, specialized schools and others, meet to examine the problems in our city’s schools and come up with student-generated solutions to them. For example, we’ve advocated the need for smaller classes to the governor and other state officials. We testified before the New York City Council against the cell phone ban, and most recently we’ve lobbied the Department of Education on improving its new progress reports and student surveys.

Additionally we work on student empowerment projects such as our Student Government Project, in which we are researching the state of student governments around the city and look to develop an effective student government model so that students can have a greater say in their individual schools, and the NYC Students Blog, the first-ever student-run blog about the NYC education system, which features the voices of seven student bloggers, representing every borough, giving their take on education issues.

I believe that the only way to make students the subject of the education debate is for us to take a more active role in larger education politics and the goings on of our own schools. We must remember that we are the learners. That is an honorable position to be in. We are not products or tools or criminals. We are potential incarnate.

Cross-posted on the NYC Students Blog

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

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

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

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

In Insideschools’ most recent college advice column, our counselor noted that guidance counselors in many high schools are responsible for so many students that they often are unable to give each kid the attention he or she deserves. I recently heard from a father who said the same situation persists in middle schools as well. Kids applying to high school or college don’t get adequate support, nor do kids who need help solving personal or family problems.

Why doesn’t this issue get more attention? Possibly, it’s because the situation hasn’t changed much in decades. Check out a 1990 New York Times article on the subject, “Trying Times for Guidance Counselors.” The article describes a system that is underfunded by the state, where guidance counselors can just barely stay on top of paperwork, much less grapple with the individual and very adult challenges of their students. If that doesn’t sound familiar, perhaps this will:

”Our kids are feeling totally alienated and not connected,” said Caesar Previdi, the principal of Martin Luther King Jr. High School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. ”The schools have gone too far in the direction of judging kids on the basis of test scores and grades. In the schools we should not be ducking our responsiblity to support the family if and when thqe family is crippled.”

Some things never change.

Many of us know that kids with limited English proficiency have limited high school options. But it’s a lot easier to understand what that means to immigrant kids and their families after reading Jessica Siegel’s article about Ralph Antony Toussaint, who arrived from Haiti in August at age 16, in the Village Voice’s education supplement this week.

For weeks this past fall, Ralph Antony and various members of his family ping-ponged around Brooklyn, encountering obstacles at the enrollment center and finding that several schools suggested by the DOE were too crowded to take another student or lacked the special English language instruction that a new immigrant would need. Eventually, it took the help of an advocate to get Ralph Antony admitted into overcrowded Clara Barton High School, which has a Haitian Creole dual language program.

No one should have to spend five weeks finding a high school, but at least Ralph Antony finally landed in a school that was right for him. A DOE spokesperson told the Voice, “If a school is sent a student from the enrollment center, the school should take him or her.” But several of the small high schools to which the enrollment office directed the family rejected Ralph Antony because they couldn’t provide him the services he needed. Last year, Advocates for Children Director Kim Sweet explained to the Citywide Council on High Schools that the DOE requires kids with special needs to go through the regular high school admissions process without having any assurance that their match will have the services they need. The DOE’s thinking in this situation appears to be similar, and kids who need English language services lose out.

(Incidentally, I know that I read this article last fall I read an article on the Voice’s website and for a while I tried to find it again to link to it, but it was gone. I guess holding articles for six months is one way New Times is cutting the Voice’s costs. It’s too bad, because articles like this one deserve to be seen.)

Lunch at 8:59 a.m.? That’s what some kids at Richmond Hill High School are scheduled for — so they’ve taken to drinking water all day to feel full. In today’s “On Education” column in the Times, Sam Freedman continues his crusade against overcrowding in the city’s few remaining comprehensive high schools, writing about conditions at Richmond Hill now that it enrolls 3,600 students, twice what it is meant to hold. He last wrote about the impact on Beach Channel High School of being slammed with dozens of poorly behaved students entering through “over the counter” enrollment.

Principal Frances DeSanctis says only a construction project can reduce the crowding pressure. But while DOE officials say it’s a “priority” to reduce enrollment, their only plan seems to be to hope that new small schools in the area siphon away entering 9th graders.

This letter, signed by Dana O’Brien, was published last week in the New York Times.

As a public school student myself, as well as on behalf of the New York City Student Union, I would like to commend Assemblyman Mark Weprin on his public statement on the overemphasis on high-stakes testing in New York City public education.

While there are still many great teachers in this city who are working hard to foster critical thinking, creativity, imagination and all of the qualities that make a truly educated person, their efforts are often squelched by Department of Education policies and curriculums that value uniformity and accountability over teaching and learning.

While we at the Student Union recognize and appreciate the need for accountability in such a large system, we believe that a degree of flexibility and subjectivity is necessary in evaluating schools and students. We are working with Chancellor Joel I. Klein’s staff on improving aspects of the school report card system, but there is still much to be done.

The Post today has a little more information about charter schools opening this fall. It looks like the Board of Regents is approving a dozen new charter schools: four in Queens, three in Manhattan, three in the Bronx, and one more that is still trying to settle its location. Here are three schools the Post mentions whose approval was news to me:

• La Cima, a Spanish dual-language school in Queens, opening with kindergarten and 1st grade. According to an October article in the Queens Times Newsweekly, schools in District 24 welcomed the school with “not exactly open arms” because of the district’s widespread overcrowding.
• Voice, in Queens, which will have daily music classes. According to the State Education Department, Voice’s proposed principal is currently an AP at PS 131.
• Ethical Community Charter School, in upper Manhattan or the Bronx, which is being opened by people who are inspired by the philosophy of humanist and reformer Felix Adler.

Check out our earlier post on charter schools opening in 2008 to see the names of more schools that will be opening their doors this fall. We’ll let you know about charter school application deadlines and lotteries as soon as we find out about them.

Prospective and current middle school parents might want to question math curriculums more aggressively. What topics are covered and what kind of background and training does your child’s math teacher have?

Chances are the answer to both questions could be not enough.

A new study, Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century,’’ by Michigan State University researcher and Professor William H. Schmidt, reminded me why I should be paying more attention to math issues during middle school tours.All too often, middle schools offer an unfocused curriculum taught by unprepared educators who can’t help middle school kids make the transition from arithmetic to real mathematics, Schmidt’s study found.

Teachers in five other countries are more prepared to teach math than middle school teachers in the United States, the study says.Schmidt believes the existence of a coherent and challenging math curriculum should be a deciding factor for judging the quality of a middle school. Kids who don’t get the math they need will have trouble with math in high school and won’t get very far, he warns.

Any parent touring middle schools in New York City can quickly discern wide variation in the way math is taught. Some schools offer more and push students to learn high-level math, like the well regarded NEST+M, which offers a challenging program of Singapore math. Some middle schools provide Regents-level math and others don’t.

School of the Future offers a curriculum map for 7th grade, promising a linguistic/real life approach to mathematics.’’ One school I toured handed out a sheet noting that math is part of the 6th-grade curriculum; another simply said it offers “high-quality instruction, without further explanation.

It’s easy to get confused and skip the math questions if you don’t know what to ask.That’s one reason Schmidt has long pushed for specific content standards laying out what every child is expected to learn and know by every grade in mathematics. If such standards existed nationally, parents would know what to expect. The standards would inform teacher training in math, he says.

“It’s incumbent on education schools and on our society to deem math education important enough to have such standards,€™™ Schmidt told me during an interview about his study last week.

“It’s logical,’’ he explains. With clear standards, you would have the whole system organized instead of arbitrary and hit and miss. If you follow Schmidt’s logic, choosing a middle school with a particularly strong art or music program should not mean sacrificing math education. Each and every middle school would offer similar math curriculums with properly trained teachers.

Parents who want to know more about math requirements can consult the New York State math standards, which describe should be taught in each grade. That they are somewhat confusing to follow comes as no surprise to Schmidt.

“The problem is the standards are not very accessible to parents,’’ Schmidt says. “And they can be so full of jargon it’s difficult for parents to agitate for them.

School officials may tell you it’s really hard to find enough highly trained and math teachers, says Schmidt. “But your child shouldn’t have to suffer as a result.”

Parents, says Schmidt, should ask questions about math and demand answers.

It’s one small way to push for change.

It’s too easy to say that this is the DOE’s way of shortening the school-to-prison pipeline, right?

Update 1/12: That was fast. After lots of negative feedback, the city has abandoned the plan.

Since the DOE has demonstrated that it will do whatever it wants, a good way to predict future DOE initiatives is to pay attention to what DOE officials say ought to be done. So when DOE bigwig Christopher Cerf participates on a panel about the “dismal” state of teacher evaluations and decries teachers’ “deep antipathy” to being evaluated in a meaningful way, we can assume that somewhere inside Tweed, someone is thinking about new ways to rate teachers. Unfortunately for those of us who think the influence of test scores should be limited, Cerf also said he is “unapologetic that test scores must be a central component of evaluation,”
Education Week reports from the panel.

In fact, Cerf said at the panel that DOE leaders are working on an evaluation system that will look at how far teachers raise their students’ test scores. As I recall, one of the papers presented at the Research Partnership conference in October drew on data that showed how far individual students progressed within each classroom, so evidently the bones for such a system must already exist. I imagine the larger obstacle for the DOE will be getting the UFT to agree to use a new evaluation system that relies on hard data instead of observation by other teachers. Of course, the UFT hasn’t been much of an impediment to any of the DOE’s other initiatives, even when those initiatives appeared not to be in the best interest of teachers.

Can we stop testing now, Chancellor Klein? New York rates the highest among all 50 states in a new Education Week report that looked at education funding, policy, and student achievement.

What’s that? “The state’s rating would have been even better without the lower student-achievement scores of New York City,” the Post reports the survey’s director as saying. Oh. Back to the bubble sheets.

Six months after filing suit over the city’s deal to lease most of the Randall’s Island playing fields to private schools, Harlem residents are enjoying their first day in court today. Norm Siegel, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, is trying to expand the lawsuit to make it a broader attack on the city’s proclivity to issue no-bid contracts. But the Sun reports that “in the end, the case will turn on a narrow issue: whether the city circumvented the community board and City Council in approving the lease agreement.” It’s probably best for the plaintiffs that the key legal issue is technical and not moral: contradicting their claims, the head of the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation says the deal will create even more access for public school families than they had in the past. Construction on the fields began this summer.

Lyons Community School, a new secondary school in Brooklyn, is holding a career exploration day this Saturday (1/12) and is looking for volunteers to present about their fields. The event, which runs from 12:45 to 6 p.m., is open to all New York City middle and high school students; it’s free, although the school asks for a $5 donation to defray expenses. To volunteer, contact Natalie Sherwood at 646-894-7984. For more volunteer opportunities in the city’s schools, take a look at Volunteer Match and New York Cares. And for more events, check out the Insideschools calendar.

Lots of people have complained about the progress reports, saying their dependence on test scores gives short shrift to other important features of schools, including safety, class size, and the arts. UFT President Randi Weingarten plans to do something about it.

According to the Sun, Weingarten is developing a school grading system to rival the DOE’s. In an attempt to predict what that grading system would look like, the Sun gives a rundown of Weingarten’s opinions on the progress report grades:

She has praised the education department’s emphasis on progress over absolute achievement — but denounced its reliance on just two years of test scores. She has praised the letters A, B, C, D, and F, saying “ratings help us make decisions” — but she also indicated support for giving more than one grade to each school. “Moving forward,” she wrote in the same recent column, “the progress reports should give more weight to conditions like class size and safety, access to advanced courses and the availability of enrichment activities.”

One would also think that a UFT-designed report card would give significant weight to teaching conditions at the school. Currently, how teachers feel about the support and professional development they get is condensed into just a few questions on the teacher surveys, which make up just 5 percent of the total progress report grade.

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

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

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

Do we need Backpack Solutions 101?Ask any middle school parent the biggest adjustment their child faces when they leave elementary school, and they are likely to talk about organizational skills.

Or, lack of them.Changing classes, remembering which book to bring home, writing down all the homework in a planner, locating that planner — all of these tasks can overwhelm 6th graders used to staying in one elementary school classroom and being a bit more coddled.

Apparently, this phenomenon has become so common that pricey tutors and personal organizers have organized a side business — backpack help for $100 an hour or more.

Seems there is barely a skill related to learning or growing up that can’t be outsourced these days.According to a recent New York Times article, parents are shelling out whatever it takes to help their children succeed in school. Most often, its boys who seem to have more trouble organizing and multi-tasking. As the mother of two offenders, I mined the article eagerly for tips. One of my colleagues gave a copy to his chronically disorganized son. He promptly lost it.

For a brief, irrational moment, I considered contacting tracking down the backpack organizers for an appointment. I’m sure their lines were flooded.

Then I wondered if all middle schools should offer a mini-course on backpack and perhaps even locker organization at the start of 6th grade.

My 7th grade son could have used one. He lugged a crammed backpack that may have weighed more than he does throughout his first year at Clinton School for Artists and Writers, which, like many Manhattan middle schools, requires a breathtaking climb because it occupies top floors of an elementary school.

“You will break your back,” I insisted, watching him tote textbooks and notebooks for every class, even when there was no homework. Loose change, torn papers, dog-eared permission slips and old exams mingled with soccer gear. The thing smelled.

“I don’t want to forget anything,” he replied.

My soon-to-be 6th grade son has the opposite problem. He rifles through his backpack searching for a book, his folder, a notebook he needed - only to discover he left it at soccer practice, in music class, at school or at a friend’s house.

I am taking comfort in the belief that even without tutors and courses, some middle schoolers eventually do learn their own lessons.

On a recent night, my 7th grader came home carrying only one thing -John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony with a permission slip tucked neatly inside. I immediately assumed he lost his backpack.

“I didn’t have any other homework,” he explained. “So I left my backpack in my locker.”

I didn’t ask if it was organized.

Some parents are threatening to sue the DOE over the changes to the G&T admissions policy, according to an article in Crain’s New York (subscription required). “We feel that redress in the courts is really the only way to get out the message of what the DOE is doing,” a PS 166 parent who sits on the District 3 Community Education Council said in the article. The article doesn’t specify on what grounds parents are seeking redress, but it’s clear that many are frustrated by the change and frightened about where their kids will end up in the fall — so much so that they are “shelling out thousands of dollars for consultants to help them navigate the application process.”

The Crain’s article makes sure to point out that not everyone’s buying into the “collective madness” in G&T-heavy districts. Still, come the end of March, when parents find out whether their kids have made the 95th percentile cut, I predict the madness will be contagious.

In Brooklyn today the DOE announced the permanent replacement for Debbie Almontaser, the inaugural principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy who resigned just before the start of the school year. Holly Reichert, who replaces interim acting principal Danielle Salzberg, taught for one year in the city’s schools, headed the English department at a school in Bahrain, and has worked in the DOE supporting literacy and ESL instruction. She’s also on New Visions’ list of employees, so we can assume that she’s played some part in Khalil Gibran’s development. (Salzberg was a New Visions employee before serving as principal, as well.) Let’s hope the critics can’t find anything wrong with Reichert.

And did you see the article about Khalil Gibran in last week’s New Yorker? After all the brouhaha earlier this year, is it possible that the only truly reprehensible thing about the school is the character of its namesake?

Never mind that today is the start of the elementary grades state ELA exam — what school cancels Monday classes over the weekend? Bronx Preparatory Charter School, apparently. Maybe it was snowing yesterday in Bronx Prep’s corner of Morrisania because the school’s Board of Trustees canceled classes, giving no explanation to parents and students who were already nervous about the testing, according to an article in the Post today.

As Seth pointed out once, many high school kids skip school the Friday before the SAT to rest and prepare, so perhaps Bronx Prep was just giving its kids the same opportunity that kids at Staten Island Tech have. Still, should charter schools’ scheduling autonomy extend to spur-of-the-moment decisions? And I wonder whether the board has gotten a rude awakening about the price of heating oil — the school recently moved into its own (stunning) building.

Here’s something new to worry about. Allan Kozinn, a music critic for the New York Times, recently argued in the Times that arts funds are too often going to arts organizations that provide “flyby” arts experiences, instead of building coherent and cumulative arts programs within schools. He writes:

If you look at how music was taught in public schools 40 years ago — and for decades before that — you’ll see exactly what’s needed now. Back then it was simple: Music was part of the curriculum, like math, science and social studies. … Even more crucial, if you wanted to play an instrument, lessons were free, and the school would lend you an instrument until you felt sufficiently committed to buy your own.

My mother graduated from MS 158 and Bayside High School. Her music training at those schools was strong enough that she was first bass in the Queens College orchestra. Certainly going to see the orchestra perform would not give the same results. But if the many arts organizations offering “flyby” experiences didn’t exist, I wonder whether most schools would spend money on the arts at all, especially since there are no longer any special funds earmarked for arts education. A couple of lessons by a “teaching artist” isn’t ideal by far, but at least they replace test prep with something that might intrigue kids to learn more.

How does your school teach the arts? Do your kids learn real skills and techniques? Or is Kozinn right that kids are spending too much of their arts time with visiting artists and on field trips?

Last week, when Chancellor Klein held a press conference to promote the performance bonuses going to schools with top progress report grades, he got a surprise when Assemblyman Mark Weprin, who represents Eastern Queens, where the conference was held, delivered a diatribe against the DOE’s school grading system.

“Our schools have turned — I know the chancellor is standing here, but — to Stanley Kaplan courses in a lot of ways,” Weprin said, the Times reported. His impression was not dashed by the PS 46 student who said his favorite thing about his school is that “they help us get ready for the state ELA test.”

I’m surprised that Chancellor Klein was willing to turn over the microphone to Weprin, who has made his objections to recent reforms known for a while. In fact, Weprin’s withering testimony last month at the City Council hearing about the progress reports, which you can read in full over at NYC Public School Parents, contained the exact same line the Times quoted. Perhaps if DOE officials had stuck around after their testimony was over, they could have better anticipated what Weprin would have to say.

We’re entering crunch time for elementary school students preparing for the state ELA exam. It’s being given on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday next week, and of all of the dozen tests over the course of the year, it (along with the state math exam in March) has the highest stakes for kids and schools. Third and 5th graders need passing scores to be promoted; 4th graders’ scores are used in middle school admissions. And since 85 percent of progress report grades are based on these test scores, schools have even more riding on the scores than they did in the past.

How to deal with all this pressure? Two different columnists proposed solutions in the Sun today. “Boycott the test,” suggests Robert Pondiscio, who recently returned to a career in journalism after several years teaching in the South Bronx. Regular columnist Andrew Wolf doesn’t think schools should play fast and loose with their test results but he fears that some will resort to cheating. He notes, “It won’t take too much illicit manipulation to yield results for those who stand to benefit.” I’m skeptical of Wolf’s claim that the dissolution of regional offices will result in less testing oversight but not of his observation that the incentives to cheat are stronger than ever. Certainly, we’re more likely to see cheating next week than a school boycott by parents who are fed up with all the testing.

I’ve toured New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies in Chelsea twice in three years for my very different sons, and each time I’ve had a similar reaction to the hothouse of high achievers. I’m fascinated and slightly overwhelmed. I thoroughly wish there could be more middle schools like it. Lab is diverse, eclectic and brimming with excellent teachers and students who enjoy working in groups and swapping ideas. During my visits, I heard enlightened exchanges between teachers and students. I gazed at walls covered with elaborate and worthwhile collaborative projects the school is well known for. I was impressed by the many opportunities for students who love to learn.

Each time, though, I found myself recoiling at tours jammed with high-anxiety elementary school parents already obsessed with high school and college admissions. A battery of obsessive queries about tutoring, test scores and Who-Gets-In dominated conversation, taking away from a truly interesting academic program I wanted to hear more about.

No wonder both my kids rolled their eyes. I had to remind myself the school is for kids, not parents in a city where the supply for high-quality public education does not meet the demand. My older son declared that “cruel stories about hours and hours of homework” turned him off from listing Lab as his first choice two years ago, even though I hoped he’d want to go there. He was probably right to trust his own instincts. He’s been delighted with his first choice, the Clinton School for Artists and Writers — smaller, less selective and strong in two of his favorite subjects– writing and art.

My 5th grader found himself put off by crowded hallways (mostly with touring parents) along with large class sizes (between 32 and 34 students). He declared the school of 583 to be “too big,’’ in part because Lab also houses a high school (in my mind, a distinct advantage) and he couldn’t always tell what he was seeing on the tour.

Both whirlwind visits provided only a small piece of the Lab story, so I consulted my well respected former colleague on the education beat, Joe Williams, author of Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). He’s the father of a Lab 7th grader and we’d swapped middle school impressions last time around.

“The $18 billion question is why there aren’t more schools like this,” said Joe, a former reporter for the New York Daily News and now the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform.

Joe pays equal attention to larger education obstacles in the U.S. along with the vexing smaller kind city parents face, like keeping your kids from losing multiple Metrocards. Lab, he explains, is built on high expectations and creation of an ideal culture for a school. It has a distinct philosophy, articulated on its website and evident in all instruction.

“It’s the kind of place where it’s considered okay to be intellectual,”  Joe says. “That alone is hard to pull off.” It also adds pressure that in Joe’s mind “can be both good and bad. At some level it pushes my son to do as much as he can. The downside is he’s stressed out. The homework is intense. There are a lot of kids who are at that high level without having to try that hard.’’

On balance, Joe said his 7th grader “is very happy at Lab.” He hopes he’ll consider staying through high school, and that his 4th grader will choose it for middle school as well.

For a New York City parent, that’s the ultimate endorsement.

With great fanfare today, Chancellor Klein announced that the 134 schools that earned both an “A” on their progress reports and a “well developed” on their quality reviews would get the cash prizes promised to high performers. (The DOE’s press release calls those the “top-performing schools,” but we know that isn’t quite accurate — they’re really the schools that improved most from 2006 to 2007.) The schools will get $30 per student to use at their discretion, as long as they also share the secrets of their success with schools that didn’t get such high marks.

Three times as many elementary schools as high schools are getting the funds, as are more than twice as many schools in Queens as in the Bronx. According to the list of schools the DOE released, schools are taking home chunks of change ranging from $4,458 (East New York Family Academy) to $122,837 (Franklin Roosevelt High School). I wonder why the amounts being disbursed are not all multiples of $30 — perhaps it’s a result of the DOE’s class size reduction plan that diminished classes by an average of just a fraction of a kid each?

It’s nearly halfway through the year. Have you spent at least half the money that your PTA has raised?

Raising money is not easy, but spending money well can be at least as big a challenge. You have to decide and then research exactly what you want to buy, work with teachers and principals to choose the purchases that work for them –whether new white boards or science books– and then actually make the purchase. Sometimes you even have to lay out your own money and save the receipts to get reimbursed later. Spending takes follow-through and commitment. It’s sometimes especially challenging, to get spending all the way into the classroom to improve a child’s learning experience. This money, whether spent on grow lights and plants, digital cameras, visiting poets, or field trips, is the most important money parents can raise.

Do you have a solid budget, a spending plan, or a spending committee to help with the legwork? Does your PTA have a working process for deciding how to spend your money? One source for ideas on how to spend money (and how to raise it) is PTO Today, a national organization that supports parent organizations in schools.

When you do spend money, document it. Tell parents in a newsletter what the PTA has accomplished. Post a photo of on your school’s website, for example, of kids performing in a holiday show wearing PTA-funded costumes, and write a caption letting the community know who funded the show. There is a direct connection between spending money well and being able to raise more money. Donors –whether they are parents contributing to an annual fund or foundations supporting a special arts program– will be impressed to know that you’ve been able to spend money in ways that really made a difference for your kids.

If you’re like me, you’re having trouble getting back into the workaday routine. Here’s something to hasten your return: If you want to have your child to be considered for admission to Gifted and Talented programs in kindergarten, 1st, or 2nd grade for the fall, tomorrow (1/3) is the deadline to request testing. The Request for Testing form is in the DOE’s G&T handbook; it must be returned to your child’s school or to a borough enrollment office. Testing will begin Jan. 22.

The Post’s Yoav Gonen kicks off 2008 with a status update on the cell phone ban. He notes that the bill the City Council passed in July and then reaffirmed with an override of the mayor’s veto in September allowing kids to carry their phones to school is now in effect. But it won’t make a difference to kids and their families — the mayor isn’t wavering on prohibiting kids from having their phones at school. Cell phone ban opponents go to court next month in their suit against the city, and council members hope their bill, ineffectual as it is right now, will be ammunition against the ban.