Liz Willen writes High School Hustle, about the high school admissions process, but her younger son has joined his brother in middle school, thus, this post.

One day, I will be a recovering middle school parent. In the meantime, I find myself either losing my temper or shaking my head and laughing at the various mishaps that accompany middle-school independence.

In my household, it began last week with the eighth-grader’s wallet — lost, lost! — along with the MetroCard and cash inside.

Recovered later under a chair.

Later in the week, a language-arts notebook crisis: an entry worked on for hours the night before gone, gone! A mad scramble, shouting, searching. The notebook turns up several hours later (too late for the morning commute), mistakenly placed inside another backpack. The sixth-grader is late for school.

All is well for at least a day, until mysteriously the eighth-grader’s wallet disappears — again! “I think I was pickpocketed,” he explains earnestly.

We talk about being more careful on the subway. He prepares to ask his school for another MetroCard when the call comes in: “We found your son’s wallet with MetroCard and cash inside on the floor,” a school aide says.

A friend’s seventh-grader keeps coming home with absolutely everything in his backpack. When she wondered why he couldn’t put anything away, he pointed out that he can no longer use his locker. Why? Because the food he left inside it a week earlier inspired a roach invasion, and he can’t bear to open it up.

Another friend says her child brings home nothing but a few scraps of paper. What about the planner? What planner?

As parents, we can simply stop bugging them and let our middle schoolers rise and fall on their own. Instead, most of us are once again making lists and begging our children to check them off and remember what they need — and don’t need — every day.

The long-anticipated death of print has two new late-September heralds: First, the imminent demise of the New York Sun, which may fold this week unless a deep-pocketed sponsor, un-scarred by market woes, leaps into the newsprint fray. And the ongoing contraction of education reporting at the Times continues, with dwindling ranks of education writers — exeunt, Sam Freeman, Will Okun — and the disappearance of the Education column.

For a dose of first-person prose by six teachers wrestling with issues of culture, instruction, and the life of the classroom, visit this Times blog. It’s not hard news — but the voices are as real as they get, and reveal much about the challenges and occasional successes inside the nation’s schools.

If you’ve spent all week wondering whether paying some teachers not to teach improves the over-all quality of instruction, or if you have been too engrossed in the Times Magazine’s annual College Issue to get to the papers, here’s a recap of NYC school news.

First, some some shake-ups in the DOE: Chief equality officer Roland Fryer has resigned to lead the newly minted Educational Innovation Laboratory. Fryer, who is also a Harvard professor, will continue to study the controversial cash-for-performance program that he brought to New York, which is being expanded to include some eighth graders. The city has hired a new person in charge of schools ethics who held the same job for an infamously ethically-challenged former-politician. Christine Quinn, who is most likely running for mayor in ‘09, staunchly defended mayoral control of the schools. She may be facing some steep competition in that mayoral race; both Bloomberg and Klein might throw their hats in, with schools at the center of either potential candidate’s platform.

With all the excessed teacher news, the Sun also wrote about a disturbing trend that the percentage of new teachers who are black is shrinking, rather dramatically. A host of teachers with illegally-large class-sizes have filed grievances with the DOE. And there doesn’t seem to be any space for classes of any size downtown next fall, but when new schools finally do open, parents are relieved that they will have K-8 options. Students and teachers across the city may get two more religious holidays off next year: Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha. And a new field-trip option opened in Harlem: a state of the art DNA lab.

City Limits took an in-depth look at universal pre-k issues in the city, and a five-year-old was mistakenly loaded onto a school bus and then kicked out at the end of the line. The big push to get soda out of schools may not have had much of an effect on soda consumption, but an advertising lesson in three California High Schools aims to emphasize the value of drinking milk to students across the country.

Both the Sun and the Times today take up the thorny issue of ‘excessed’ teachers, after a UFT press conference and volleys of emails and other communication between DOE and UFT leadership. Of the city’s 15,000 teachers, about 1,000 have been ‘excessed’ from their schools — because the school closed or was restructured by the DOE or as the result of budget-cutting efforts by CEO principals faced with contracting school budgets. (It’s also entirely possible that some weak teachers were moved out to improve the overall quality of teaching, but no one addresses this question directly.)

Excessed teachers are assigned to the Absent Teacher Pool — which the nonprofit New Teacher Project suggests will cost the city $74 million in 2008-09. The Pool is a kind of human reservoir, that schools can dip into in order to fill temporary or longer-term vacancies.

The Catch-22 here is, no surprise, money. The contract negotiated between the city and the UFT in 2005 significantly increased teacher compensation, which was long overdue. But for principals looking to trim $75,000 or so from their budget, laying off an experienced classroom veteran in favor of less-costly newbie makes tough sense.

The DOE wants to limit the time a teacher can remain in the Pool; the UFT says that’s not what they agreed in the contract and wants a hiring freeze until excessed teachers have jobs. Several members charge discrimination, saying that principals aren’t interested in more-expensive, older talent.

How to best use the teachers in the Absent Teacher Pool will surely persist as a nagging and very expensive question: How many teachers at failed or closing schools — some of the same classroom leaders who received big cash rewards a few days ago — will find themselves there next year?

The economy’s dominating the national news, and on the civic landscape, the proposed across-the-board 2.5% budget cuts requested by Mayor Bloomberg could translate to $185 million in cuts to the city’s schools — a third more than the $120 million in proposed cuts that was so bitterly opposed earlier this year.

It’s worth pointing out that two big-ticket programs previously funded by private donations — the Leadership Academy, which grooms new principals, and the cash-incentive awards for Progress Reports, each at an annual cost of close to $20 million — are supposed to shift to public support in the coming year. That’s a cool $40 million in public funds — a big number by any standard, and especially so when set against the sting of $185 million in possible cuts.

Proposals for leaner budgets are due to the Mayor in early October; time will tell how DOE planners will make some of the most difficult economic choices of the Bloomberg-Klein administration.

Toni Bruno is a sax-playing junior at LaGuardia High School and member of the New York City Student Union; we’re pleased and proud to welcome her regular contributions to Insideschools’ blog this year.

This past Saturday, I had one of the most interesting and educational experiences of my life canvassing for Barack Obama with my parents . Spending the day involved in the political process in Pennsylvania made me think that high schools should be focusing on our two candidates in the months leading up to this pivotal election. I can’t think of anything more valuable to teach teenagers, who will be voting in the next election, then involvement and awareness during election years.

In my former elementary school, P.S.321, fourth and fifth graders are currently involved in an intensive election study. Every four years, teachers take two months out from Revolutionary War/Civil War curriculum in order to get the kids to understand our country’s political systems. The students run as candidates, choosing vice-presidents and discussing practical solutions to their own school problems.

If elementary school students can have such inspiring yet informative political educations, I can only imagine the ways in which a high school faculty could involve their students in the elections. For the first time in my life, my peers and I are really following and caring about our future president. But I notice that whenever our class discussions move in a potentially heated political direction, teachers flash the lights to calm things down, and remind us of our aim for the day (what cash crop saved Jamestown during the early Colonial period of American History?).

I would like to encourage high school staff members to embrace the interest that their students are taking in the coming elections. Encourage discussion and most of all activism. What more could you want to teach your students than citizenship and political involvement at crucial moments in history?

P.S. Obama ‘08!!!! (in case you hadn’t guessed).

Three 6-12 schools already exist in Brooklyn’s District 15 — The Secondary Schools for Law, Journalism and Social Research, in the old John Jay High School building — to mixed reviews, but the DOE has approved a new secondary charter, the Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, to open in September 2009. It will be District 15’s first charter school at any level and only the second secondary charter school in the city. Admission is by lottery, with priority to District 15.

Information sessions are planned for October 6 and 27 from 6-8 p.m. at Methodist Hospital in Park Slope. Tours are moot: There’s no actual site for the school just yet. Executive director and co-founder Dan Rubenstein says that he’s hoping for a site within walking distance of BAM, their community partner, although he expects the school will incubate in one site in the short term before being assigned its own building.

Led by Rubenstein and Luyen Chou (a founder of the fabled School at Columbia University, ed-tech wizard, and former Dalton faculty member), the new charter will open with 88 students in four sixth-grade classes and grow with a new grade every year. Rubenstein, who describes himself as “a teacher first and a school leader second,” says all Brooklyn Prospect teachers will be certified but will not be bound by union contracts, as is common among charters since they often require longer hours and other work not permitted by UFT regulations.

No building seems to be no problem for interested parents. Applications are being accepted for the coming year; to learn more or RSVP for an info session, visit the school’s website.

Should teachers at schools destined for closure double down and teach with greater vigor — or slouch into oblivion? An article by Jennifer Medina in today’s Times highlights the apparently contradictory (and surely embarrassing) fact that the DOE gave significant cash awards, linked to the school progress reports, to teachers and administrators at five DOE-designated ‘failed’ schools.

The core question — how can DOE both reward and punish the same schools? — is well worth asking. And some of the players, notably John Hughes of the newly-renamed Hunts Point School (which was, last year, MS 201), do force questions of ethics and judgment. But for a moment, consider the teachers, the folks in the classrooms, and recognize the dedication that keeps them coming back, despite a school being shuttered around them and the pressure to find a new job.

Teachers who help students learn are to be celebrated. Teachers who help students learn even when the school they share is on the DOE chopping block deserve medals — and loud praise from the communities they serve.

The NY Sun yesterday cited DOE enrollment numbers, concluding that “P.S. 87 on 78th Street would be at 50% capacity if only neighborhood students zoned for the school attended.” The way that this number turns out to be false reveals a lot about the DOE’s preliminary rezoning proposal.

If you kicked out all kids attending the school last year in grades K-5 who didn’t live in the zone, according to DOE data, the school would indeed be at 50% capacity. But DOE analysis misses a basic trend: each year, the percentage of in-zone kids has been rising. While 60 lottery seats were offered in 2007-08, only 35 lottery seats were offered for PS 87 kindergarteners for 2008-09.

Of those 35 seats, at least 16 went to siblings. Several others went to children with special needs who are assigned to PS 87 for CTT (collaborative team teaching) classes and other services. So of 175 kindergarten kids, fewer than a dozen, or about 7 percent, are non-sibling, non-special ed “out of zone” children.

The DOE is implying that it can gain scores of seats at PS 87 by limiting the lottery and expanding the catchment zone. But with fewer out of zone kids entering the school every year, redrawing PS 87’s zone lines won’t be much help in solving district overcrowding (as opposed to building a new school). Last night, parents from most grade schools on the Upper West Side met to discuss the DOE’s preliminary rezoning proposal. While each school community has its own unique circumstances, some unifying themes emerged:

· Parents want sibling preference to be grandfathered in during any transition period;

· Schools with successful G&T or dual language programs want to be able to maintain them;

· Zone lines raised more questions than they solved; parents called on DOE to be more specific about metrics used to estimate the influx of children from new housing.

In the coming days, District 3’s Community Education Council will look carefully at both the numbers and the underlying assumptions of DOE’s proposals. We will scrutinize DOE’s brand-new concept of “Target Zone Utilization,”to determine whether this number, which has no history or alignment with other educational goals, is an appropriate benchmark from which to build a plan.

Personally, I take hope from DOE comments that last week’s initial proposal was just a starting point, a basis for conversation, and that District 3 families will be able to shape a DOE proposal that is based on realistic numbers leading to a real solution to overcrowding in our schools. Maybe I am naive, or masochistic, but I’m really not upset. At least not yet.

Updates: DOE rep Will Havemann said that DOE representatives would, on the CEC’s invitation, come to additional meetings to hear parent and community comment on the rezoning proposal.

The CEC will next meet on October 2, at the JOA Complex (154 West 93d Street), at 6:30 pm. Parents and community members are welcome to attend, but organizers say there will be no opportunity for public comment. -hz

Saturday was one of those perfect Indian summer days. The beach beckoned; the greenmarkets overflowed with pungent basil and ripe produce; tourists marched in droves over the Brooklyn Bridge to see the waterfalls. I pulled my reluctant 12-year-old out of bed and headed to the jam-packed citywide high school fair at Brooklyn Tech.

“But I don’t want to go to Brooklyn Tech,” he complained. The fair, I replied calmly, would be a chance to ask questions of hundreds of students, counselors, principals and others about their high schools all over the city.

The Department of Education has provided lots of opportunities to learn about the high school process, which is far more daunting, overwhelming and confusing than the one we just participated in to find a middle school. The fair was one of them, and I did learn a few things. I spoke to some energetic and devoted teachers at the up-and-coming Brooklyn Latin, and I came away totally impressed. I learned more about specialty high school exams and how to rank the schools. I discovered there are lots of new and innovative high schools worth checking out. I finally found out when some open house dates might be for schools on our (well, let’s be frank) on my list.

“So what did you learn at the high school fair?” I asked my son as we huffed up and downstairs to find schools that interest him. It came as no surprise to find they were also the schools with the biggest crowds: for example, Bard, Beacon, Millennium, Stuyvesant and his current obsession, LaGuardia. “I learned a lot of people want to go to LaGuardia,” he said.

When we got home, he spent two hours practicing for his audition in November. Our next step will be to visit some open houses and to have another one of those “you can’t put all your eggs in basket,” talks. It’s great to know what you want – even if you have yet to see it or experience it — but it’s also important to get a good sense of different high schools and what they offer.

West Side parents famously covet seats at strong local elementary schools; the DOE, well aware of the constant demand, is “floating” two rezoning proposals to address the District 3 crunch, according to Elizabeth Green in today’s New York Sun. (Insideschools’ blogger Jennifer Freeman is quoted in the story; she’ll give us her take on the situation after the CEC meets this evening.)

One strategy would affect nearly a third of neighborhood families, and could place siblings of different ages at different schools. Another posits relocation of two well-regarded schools — the Anderson and Center schools — to allow their currently cramped buildings to accept more local students. As can be imagined, local blogs and street-corners are buzzing: Possible plans to expand the district farther uptown, for example, raise concerns about lottery-driven long commutes.

Any rezoning plans require CEC approval. If you’ve got something to say, now’s the time: The District 3 CEC will meet at 5:30 at the JOA Complex, 154 West 93d St.

Update: See the rezoning proposal here; DOE rep Will Havemann says it’s the “first iteration in a long conversation” — but says a final vote is desired by the end of November, and that kindergarten applications for 2009-10 will be affected by any rezoning plans approved this fall.

A feature in today’s Times showcases rising efforts by many colleges and universities to diminish the influence of the SAT exam in college admissions; scholars and journalists have repeatedly documented real advantages to more-advantaged students, and this article mentions the generally slim gains that hired test-prep confers. But the SAT is widely used, especially by schools that screen thousands of applicants, as a benchmark for consideration, making its elimination entirely unlikely. Some schools make the SAT optional and many encourage students to take SAT IIs and ACT exams to bolster or replace less-robust SAT scores.

As it turns out, applicants should pay attention to their Facebook pages along with their prep packets and textbooks: One in ten undergraduate admissions officers at 500 “top” schools (based on US News and World Report listings) say that they look at prospective students’ Facebook pages. For grad applications, 9% of business schools say they refer to Facebook and other social networking sites, as do 14% of law schools and 15% of medical schools.

The upshot? About a quarter of admissions officials who use Facebook say they come away with a more positive view of the students that apply. But quite a few more — 38% — say that the impact is negative, highlighting what Binghamton University provost Sandra Starke calls a “sticky wicket” — a theoretically private, actually public web page that’s easily accessible (and often a lot more revealing than the well-crafted essay).

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers came to Brooklyn Tech this weekend for the high school fair, with lines that wrapped up Fort Greene Place and along Fulton Street. More than 19,000 people attended on Saturday alone, according to Elizabeth Sciabarra, who should know. (She’s the head of the DOE’s Office of Student Enrollment and Planning.) Last year, 80,000 students applied for high-school seats; visitors this weekend seemed to include at least as many parents and younger siblings, in reluctant tow, as eighth-graders.

While some precociously prescient kids claimed to have been working on their high-school lists since sixth grade, many others were thinking through their choices as they met with principals and older students. A few middle schools organized school buses to bring students and families to the fair. But plenty of parents were uncertain about the high-school selection and admissions process; one father asked, before going into Tech, “What’s all the fuss? Aren’t all the high schools the same?”

If you attended the fair this weekend, what did you learn? What surprised you? What would you change? Next month, each borough will host its own high-school fair; what can we tell parents to prepare them for the day — and help them get the most from the time they invest?

Wall Street may be flailing but this week, many city teachers and principals are flush, thanks to bonuses based on the school progress reports. There also still seems to be enough cash left for Village residents to open a new private high school and parents to apply in record-breaking numbers for spaces in Financial District private kindergarten. For some, spending money still looks like a good investimen; as there are more high school seniors in the United States than ever before, lots of families hiring expensive private college counselors to try to get an edge on the competition.

A teacher at the Bronx School of Law and Finance is using the volatile markets to teach economics lessons. Maybe she can explain how class size in more than half of city schools went up despite state aid to lower class size — and the revelation that more teachers are receiving paychecks without being given a teaching assignment.

Despite Bloomberg’s “no social promotion” mandate, fewer students were held back this year. Summer school lessons, however, do not seem to be enough to help most students who failed during the regular school year make up the work and move to the next grade.

Charter schools, many of which received top grades this week, may face serious threats in the future, according one advocate. But for now, New York’s charters hope to get a little more help from the state and a little less regulation.

Some of the school bus problems may be getting sorted out, but the affected students, many of whom have special needs, now have to settle into their school year routines… three weeks late. Several students with ADHD who attended an NYU summer program are adjusting well to school, however, which their parents credit to their structured summer.

Bloomberg responded to the Times editorial last week that suggested mayoral control of the schools might have a few more checks and balances. Naturally, the mayor disagreed. Several top Boston educators who have moved to New York might add to his case.

Education experts square off on Obama’s plan for the nations schools, and The Sun uncovered Klein’s education policy reading list.

While most of the education news this week circled around the Progress Report grades, when the Times discovered that the Chancellor also grades his own staff on how well they host a press conference, press secretary, David Cantor, was inspired to email the Gray Lady their own grade: “Value of the story: F.”

In a disturbing, cross-town coincidence, NY1 reports that students at three high schools have been exposed to pepper spray this week, with more than two dozen kids evaluated for complaints ranging from chest pains to burning eyes, and two 14-year-olds, in separate incidents, detained by the NYPD.

What are kids doing with pepper spray, and what are they doing bringing it to school?

The first step in our family’s New York City public high school search did not involve delving into our growing piles of books, papers and test prep brochures, gathered at various information sessions.

We watched the movie “Fame,’’ that 1980 classic set at the old New York City High School for the Performing Arts, which became the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. It seemed like a better idea than shoving a pile of materials in front of my 12-year-old and pointing out that there are more than 400 high schools to choose from. “So, where do you want to go? Take a look and rank them from 1 to 12!’’ My musician son has thought very little about high school (didn’t we just choose a middle school?) but he does know about LaGuardia, even if we’ve never set foot in the place and can’t figure out when the next open house is.

“Fame” is a bit outdated. The students looked about 25, as far as we could tell, but we followed their hopes, dreams, and struggles with rapt interest. Afterwards, we talked a bit about competition, and about what auditions for LaGuardia might be like. We discussed the wisdom of entering high school with enormous focus and ambition at such a young age. Well, maybe ‘discussed’ isn’t the right word, I probably talked about the importance of combining passion for the arts with the strongest academic and college-preparatory curriculum possible; my son probably nodded and did his best to ignore me. It’s time to take the next step, so we’ll head to Brooklyn Tech on Saturday for the citywide high school fair. Even though there are more than 400 high schools to choose from, I have a feeling the crowds will gather in front of about 20 of the best-known. I doubt it will be as much fun as watching “Fame,’’ but at least it’s a start.

We’re happy to welcome back Insideschools guest blogger and school-search veteran Liz Willen. And for the record, LaGuardia has open houses for accepted students; the school does not offer public tours prior to admission.

Chancellor Klein and UFT president Randi Weingarten announced this morning that more than 6,000 elementary and middle schools educators will receive cash bonuses in reward for their schools’ performances on the progress reports. Faculty at 89 schools, slightly more than half of the 160 elementary and middle schools that elected to participate in the pilot program, qualified for the bonuses. The schools decided how to distribute the bonuses among full-time union members (either equally or based each individual’s contribution). Most schools chose to divide the money equally, sending teachers home with either $3,000 or $1,500 each, depending on the school’s progress report turned out. (Principals were awarded up to $25,000; for more details on the methodology and results, see the DOE’s breakdown.)

The bonuses for elementary and middle schools this year totaled $19.7 million (cash awards for teachers and administrators at high schools will be announced later). All of the money was privately donated. Next year, however, the program becomes publicly funded. Since there is no cap on how many schools can qualify for the cash, if the progress report grades continue their upward trend, the bonus-program could take a big bite out of the shrinking DOE budget. Yesterday, Helen rounded up several concerns about the progress reports, and today, Insideschools alum Philissa Cramer analyzed apparent methodological errors in the progress reports. Chancellor Klein and Randi Weingarten stressed that the pilot bonus program would be studied by an independent consultant – but will the progress reports, which the bonuses are based on –undergo the same scrutiny?

In this first year, the program was both an experiment in implementation and a welcome reward for hard-working educators; whether the ‘carrot’ of a bonus actually inspires better teaching or contributes to hiring and keeping qualified teachers is still left to be tested because schools opted into the program too late last year for the cash incentives to have substantially affected this year’s progress reports. It will take many years, and no doubt many independent consultants, to determine whether the carrot-aspect of the plan actually works and whether that means even more stress on test prep.

Like so many official school announcements, the Washington Heights location of the press conference was strategic; everyone hiked uptown to the Mirabel Sisters campus, formerly the site of one of the city’s worst-performing middle schools and now the home of three small schools, two of which received As on their progress reports and cash bonuses for their faculty and staff. The teachers and principals from those schools talked about a moral imperative to help students succeed, collaborative work among the staff, and using data to drive instruction, barely mentioning the windfall they had just received. “The money is very nice,” Janet Heller, one of the two principals, eventually acknowledged with a smile. “We aren’t working for it, but it recognizes that we did it.”

The DOE hosts its all-city high school fair this weekend at Brooklyn Tech; see this article in the current Insideschools alert for a nuts-and-bolts guide to beginning the high school admissions process.

Because it’s wholly unlikely you’ll want to look at all 400+ city high schools (one can only hope!), try to narrow your choices a bit before you go to the fair. Consider, for starters, admissions criteria, school size, and commute, and you’ll whittle your list significantly.

Admissions criteria are meant to guide applications; take them seriously. If a school says it requires an 85% average in core academics and your child’s average is lower, it may not be worth sacrificing a line on your child’s application. If you’re in doubt, ask at the fair — but be aware that many schools will not consider students who do not meet their baseline criteria, and are not inclined to make exceptions.

School size is a big question for lots of families. Small schools offer personalization and, advocates say, a stronger support system for youngsters; large schools mean a wider breadth of classes (more teachers, more kids, more classes), more teams and clubs, and, critics say, an often-cumbersome and occasionally overwhelming school environment. Talk with your child about what she wants, both in terms of academic offerings and the life of the school — the activities and interests that might engage her.

Commuting is a New York City reality; for most city teens, the walk-to-school era is over, and has been for a while. The DOE considers up to two hours a reasonable commute (it grants travel transfers when commutes extend past that time; check hopstop for ‘official’ travel time — it’s the DOE’s source, too), but two hours one way adds to 20 hours a week, which is a lot of time to spend in transit (and likely a lot longer than most parents spend commuting to and from work).

Once you’ve thought through these basics, visit schools of interest at the fair to learn more about them. Often, kids from the high schools attend the fairs, so it’s a great way to meet real students. And for those who can’t get to Brooklyn this weekend, boro-wide fairs will be held in mid-October; again, see our alert for details.

Good luck to all, and happy hunting.

The public conversation about this year’s Progress Reports has begun in earnest. If nothing else, the very fact of a public debate on the measure — which hinges on how best to measure what kids learn — can only be healthy for our city’s schools and the kids who attend them.

The Times’ overview, which does a great job describing how the progress reports work and identifies apparent incongruities (eg, very low achievement levels in A schools, and NCLB-designated ‘failing’ schools awarded with DOE A’s) is complemented by profiles of two schools, one new A (from a 2007 F) and one new F (from a 2007 A). The Sun connects the dots — rising citywide test scores translate to higher progress-report grades — and points out a pattern of dramatic school gains rather than incremental progress. The Post called the scores a “seismic shift,” crediting the “kick in the pants” of previous failures, and the News also linked the “surge” in good grades to “soaring” test scores — and highlighted the objections of some beloved, respected schools that didn’t ace the progress reports. Overall, the link between test score and progress grade can’t be overstated (the single measure for student progress is student scores on standardized ELA and math tests).

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum derided the reports’ narrow scope, saying arts and other vital academic curriculum shouldn’t be excluded, and both Randi Weingarten (of the teachers union) and Ernest Logan (of the principals union) expressed cautious concern. Advocates for Children Executive Director Kim Sweet, in a radio interview this morning, suggested that a single grade is too blunt a tool to really reflect what goes on in a school, and echoed parent concerns about matters beyond testing. And Eduwonkette dissects the scores with a statistician’s scalpel.

Ellen Foote, an outspoken middle-school principal whose school’s score rose from a 2007 D to a 2008 A, told the Times, “A school doesn’t move from a D to an A in one year unless there is a flaw in the measurement or the standardized test itself. We have not done anything differently, certainly not in response to the progress report.” The Sun, noting that Foote’s school, IS 289, won a Blue Ribbon award earlier this month, spoke with her, too, and reported that “when she finally opened the report card and found an A, she laughed; what meaning could the letter grade have if it had given the same school such different grades?”

It’s a good question — and Foote’s not alone in asking it.

At a crowded midday gathering at PS 5 – where principal Lena Gates was celebrating her birthday as well as her school’s “A” grade — Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Joel Klein and Chief Accountability Officer James Liebman presented an overview of the 2008 progress reports for elementary and middle schools.

This year, nearly 80% of schools scored A or B overall. Across the city, 58% of schools bettered their 2007 grade or maintained an ‘07 A; in 21% of schools, grades declined, although many fewer schools earned grades of D or F (7% total, compared with 13% in 2007). Of the F schools in 2007 that weren’t shuttered by the city, some earned A’s this year, like PS 5. None still open scored F again, although there was one D.

Unlike last year’s reports, each school received three category grades — for school environment, student performance, and progress (with extra attention and credit for struggling students). Each grade correlated with a score, which summed to the school’s overall grade.

A few notable points: Progress, as measured by standardized ELA and math scores, continues to outweigh the other report variables by a significant factor. Together, the school environment and student performance count for only 40% of the school’s score. It’s not clear why scores that correspond to the letter grades are set lower this year than they were last year.

Schools with greater proportions of struggling kids — with academic and/or economic challenges — could earn extra credit for their progress, and academic growth made by kids in the lowest third of each school factored into calculating school scores.

In a seemingly counterintuitive mode, schools with F in one area, like student performance, could earn an A for overall progress, provided that the school hit specific targets (defined on the 2007 report) and that students progressed toward grade level (without requiring actual achievement of same). And one school identified by the NYSED as persistently dangerous still earned an A from the city.

Two of the three top-scoring schools are established charters in historically underserved communities. (The city says comparing schools against peer schools, with comparable demographics and student characteristics, resolves questions about comparing progress for striving schools against schools with track records of high performance.) The Mayor said that teachers and schools that showed outstanding progress would be rewarded, although he didn’t say precisely how, when, or if rewards would accrue to individual teachers, schools, or school leadership.

Find progress reports for your child’s school via the DOE’s home page.

Classes in more than half of the city’s schools are growing larger, according to a new report by the New York State Department of Education, despite Contracts for Excellence funding directed at decreasing classes and lowering the student/teacher ratio.

While class sizes dropped in many schools citywide, classes actually grew in 53.9 percent of schools. In addition, the NYSED noted 70 city schools that received $100,000 or more where either class size or the student/teacher ratio increased. The estimated damage? $20 million in wasted funds, according to Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters.

Already-large schools were most challenged by first-year size reduction targets, said NYSED, which criticized DOE reporting and record keeping and urged better compliance in coming years’ efforts. It also asked for stricter accounting of how class-reduction funds were spent and for more stringent review of New York City’s C4E funding. In other words, accountability and transparency; sound familiar?

Special education students are facing even more significant problems than the busing issues  that continue to keep them spending almost as many hours en-route to school as in the classroom. Despite such snafus, the Times editorial board endorsed the reinstatement of mayoral control, only with the changes recommended last week by the Public Advocate’s commission of experts. Meanwhile–as the future of mayoral control hangs in the balance–a  former New York City chancellor is being fired from his new job, and the DOE is investing a million dollars in its own think tank, hoping that the schools can teach each other a lesson. Several NYC lessons have leaked down south where schools in Washington D.C., called the “worst” in the country by Education Week, have seen significant changes with Klein-protege Michelle Rhee at the helm. 

Obama laid out his education plan and the Times analyzed McCain’s school policies while advertisements (mis)claiming that Obama wanted to teach sex ed. to kindergarteners hit the airways. The good news: Education issues have suddenly moved to the forefront of the national race. Kindergartners in New York may not have sex ed. class, but many of them will have the Big Kid experience of sitting for standardized tests this year–principals have gone gaga over the proposal. And on Tuesday, the Post ran a glowing profile of PS 8 principal Seth Phillips, just two days before the news broke that his school would receive an F on its report card this year. 

New York students who want to learn about international politics can no longer visit the United Nations on a field trip–at least until the mayor feels confident that they won’t be in immediate danger while on international property.  A more likely menace, however, rears its very ugly face on the pages of the Daily News, as well as in classrooms and on heads across the city. 

Well, Eduwonkette called it last Monday (and even had fun with a stats results pool):  The DOE has delivered 2008 School Progress Reports cards to the city’s schools, far earlier in the academic year than the November 2007 release.  (Nomenclature alert:  Progress reports are DOE measures; school report cards are products of the NY State Dept. of Education.)

Elissa Gootman’s Times story leads with a failing grade for PS 8 – the same school that Bloomberg praised when the DOE committed to building a new, multimillion-dollar annex to accomodate all the students flocking to the now-thriving school.  The school’s current F (after last year’s C) highlights what critics call the Progress Reports’ greatest flaw:  More-than-majority weight on student academic progress — measured by standardized test scores — means that schools that start with more kids on or above grade level can show less ‘progress’ than more challenged schools. The reports weigh other factors, including parent and teacher satisfaction, but a 60% weight on progress could clobber other, quality-of-school-life measures.

The apparent contradiction — major capital investment in an F school (which, if rules are followed, could risk eventual closure) — forces the question:  Don’t the various departments of the DOE talk to each other?  Parents have to wonder how a school can be rewarded and punished by the same hand.  Parents who want to see scores for their child’s school have to wait — the 2007-08 scores are not yet posted on the DOE website.  

Update:  DOE sources say that someone in the school “apparently leaked” the score information.  The 2007-08 Progress Reports will be released sometime next week.   Stay tuned…  

The same sixth-graders who were in their first week of middle school, seven years ago today, are in their first month of college.  2001’s first-graders are now eighth-graders; the children who fill their small, primary-school seats weren’t even born on that crystalline September morning. 

One foot in front of the other: Life goes on.  We remember.

With the news that the Obama campaign aims to double federal dollars for charter schools in concert with the McCain camp’s established charter-school support (along with its concerted push for public-school vouchers), more attention is being focused on charters as alternatives to failing mainstream schools. Charters are fairly young institutions — the first charter school in the U.S. opened its doors in 1992 in Minnesota — but 4,300 more have debuted in the years since, and a new report by Education Week predicts an “acute shortage of leaders” — to the tune of up to 20,000 new principals — in response to the “unprecedented scale-up” in charter school growth. Charter school leaders tend to be younger and less experienced than principals of traditional public schools; nearly 60 percent have less than five years experience as school leaders.

Lumping all charters under one expansive umbrella risks oversimplifying the issue: For starters, some are run by veteran administrators, others by mission-driven idealists; some are sponsored by profit-making business entities and others by non-profit philanthropic or community-based institutions; and because most do not use union teachers, there’s  enormous variability in pay, hours, and what’s expected on the job. Philosophically, charters can be ultra-structured and traditional, as many are, or more progressive. So while it’s convenient to talk about charters as a single bloc, it’s important to realize the variability in each school’s mission, staffing, teaching practices, and the community it serves.

Charter schools have become a fixture of the public-school landscape. Their exponential growth gives some serious pause, but many families find much to praise, as evidenced by jammed lotteries for prized schools. Yet whether charters truly serve all the city’s students, or only certain swaths of historically undeserved communities, remains an open question. And given the location of the 18 charters opened by the DOE this fall, it’s one that won’t likely be answered anytime soon.

Insideschools founder Clara Hemphill weighed in on the debate between public and private education in the current issue of New York Family magazine. The article has good advice for parents grappling with the decision — we only wish they’d identified our new book correctly in the introduction. (For the record, it’s “New York City’s Best Public Middle Schools: A Parents’ Guide.”)   

“Middle schools have traditionally been the weak link in the city public school system,”  Hemphill tells New York Family, which makes the new book particularly relevant — and the DOE’s stated goal of revamping middle schools particularly urgent.  (Have a look here  for more on middle-school reform and initiatives like the International Baccalaureate Program.)

Yes, the new-school dust is still swirling, but for families of eighth-graders, the high school admissions process looms large on the horizon. Much of what you’ve heard is true: The process is daunting and potentially confusing; it can be hard to know which of the city’s 400+ high schools might best serve your child; and yes, this is the kind of decision that can have a profound effect on your child’s life and future. High stakes? No kidding.

The DOE hosts a behemoth, two-day citywide high school fair and fairs for each borough (dates and times to come); we’ll have more on the blog next week on how to navigate a fair without feeling swamped. OSEPO’s high school admissions head, Evaristo Jimenez, took questions on the DOE website (responding mainly with generic ’see the directory/talk to your counselor/go to registration centers’ answers); Insideschools’ guide to high school admissions walks you through the basics; and faithful readers will be glad to welcome back Liz Willen, whose Middle School Muddle will morph into High School Hustle this year. We’d also be glad to hear from readers about the process — what works, what doesn’t, and what surprises them along the way.

Stay tuned for more on fairs and open houses, and look for details on our Open House calendar, which is updated often in this pre-tour season. The process is intense and demanding, but at least it’s fairly short-lived: By mid-December, your child will have completed his or her application and the decision-making will shift to the schools and to DOE.

To herald the new school year, the news last week was filled with first day of school stories. Articles spotlit new schools, new charter schools, and charter school networks new to New York; others described overcrowded schools, school enrollment issues and school scheduling issues; yet more explored poorly performing schools, projected shortages of schools in the future, and traffic problems around schools.

Even in this maelstrom, a significant amount of conversation swirled around mayoral control of the Department of Education and whether it would be renewed, especially in light of the recommendations made by the Public Advocate’s commission of experts. Despite the commission’s support (with caveats) for mayoral control, Bloomberg slammed their suggestions, saying he “can’t take it very seriously.” But just one day before his harsh outburst, the Mayor held a press conference decrying school bullies and introducing new anti-bullying regulations.

Although term limits most likely mean a Bloomberg exit from City Hall, some movers and shakers want to put Chancellor Klein up for the job. Parents, meanwhile, are taking school reform into their own hands - in both in legal and illegal ways.

It may be less than two miles from principal Josh Klaris’ former elementary school, PS 183, to the brand-new DREAM Charter School—opening today with a visit by Chancellor Joel Klein—but the challenges of opening a charter school in East Harlem differ greatly from managing a thriving, Upper East Side elementary school, where the PTA raises about $300,000 a year.

The DREAM school draws its students, by lottery, largely from Manhattan’s District 4. In a new spin on the collaborative-team-teaching model, which pairs gen-ed and special-needs teachers in a shared classroom, each of DREAM’s four classes is led by two instructors—one general-education and one certified to teach English as a Second Language or Special Education. The curriculum revolves around University of Pittsburgh’s Dr Lauren Resnick’s Nine Principles of Learning (which marry educational goals and business practices) and with a strong focus on health and wellness (including an on-staff bilingual social worker). One of the school’s eight teachers is Jerry Phillip, ex- of the embattled charter Ross Global Academy, which spent its first year at Tweed under the DOE’s watchful eye.

The DREAM charter school, which opens with 100 kindergarten and first-grade students, will eventually grow up to eighth grade, adding a class a year as children ‘age up.’ The school is an outgrowth of Harlem RBI’s nearly two decades in community recreation, education and enrichment; Harlem RBI founder Richard Berlin sits on the school’s Board, along with Skadden, Arps counsel Josh Goldstein and Eric Wiengartner, the executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Comprehensive Neighborhood Economic Development.

Lottery admissions limit enrollment; it’s not known whether younger siblings will enjoy enrollment preferences or be part of the general applicant pool. How the school fares in its first year will determine future demand—and shape its future as an East Harlem institution.

So it’s Friday afternoon and the first week of school is very nearly behind us. But it seems that bus problems never quite fade away — a parent on a Brooklyn blog wrote in to say that his child spent 2 1/2 hours on the bus ride home, the Times covered a charter-school bus driver who got lost with a bus-load of kids and finally returned to the school around 9pm, and WNYC reported on parents in the Bronx whose special-needs kids got on the bus just fine but weren’t permitted to attend the school where the bus delivered them, for reasons that continue unclear.

Parents in the Bronx have been trying to contact DOE since the first day of school with little progress. Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum’s take on the situation is sobering, to say the least.

Who doesn’t want more arts education for our city’s students? Parents as Arts Partners, via the Center for Arts Education, brings the creative process to thousands of kids and families every year. It’s a great way to get involved in the life of your child’s school and to make a real contribution to the school culture. It’s also a lot of fun.

Last year, PAAP grants funded fine arts and performing arts programs that spanned the gamut: think book-making and collage workshops, videography and architecture projects, and dance and folk-tale performances. Have a look here for successful programs.

Funding shortfalls mean that two-thirds fewer grants will be awarded this year than in years past. Grants of up to $3000 are available to 50 public schools provided they have never been CAE-funded in the past. The CAE website has tips, information and application materials; they’ll also host pre-application seminars starting later this month.

While some of the Mayor’s closest supporters launched a $20 million PR effort to maintain mayoral control of the city’s schools, additional support for mayoral governance has come from Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum’s office, via her Commission on School Governance, in a report officially released today (and leaked early to the Times). But the Commission’s support doesn’t come without (proposed) strings, aimed at strengthening parent voices in the public-school debate and creating stronger structures for oversight (of the DOE) and independence (of the Panel for Educational Policy, the Mayorally-appointed group that ‘replaced’ the old Board of Education).

The Commission, which included Insideschools founder Clara Hemphill and Advocates for Children director Kim Sweet, recognized that mayoral control brings a ‘buck stops here’ mentality that has improved school funding and collective bargaining efforts and permitted the possibility of change in a “once immovable school system.” But the same strength that focused attention, energy, and dollars on the city’s schools has muted or excluded diverse voices — from education leaders to parents and from school district offices to school leadership teams. Accordingly, the Commission recommends greater checks on “the power of the Mayor” — including appointing PEP members for four-year terms, no longer vulnerable to mayoral ouster — and more opportunity for parent and community voices in the education debate, largely by restoring Community School Districts (dismantled by Bloomberg and Klein and sorely missed by school administrators citywide) and the reinvigoration of Community Education Councils and school leadership teams.

Commission Chair Stephen R. Aiello said that over months of testimony by parents and advocates, consistent themes emerged:  “Meaningful dialogue and participation are not really taking place” in the current structure,  he said.  Restoring the voices of those with  ”something to say about what’s taking place in their community” is a signal goal, noting the still-controversial decisions to close schools imposed by the DOE.   

In a recommendation that seems sure to draw critical heat, the Commission encouraged outside oversight of the DOE by the city’s Independent Budget Office, which “should be given explicit responsibility to report on the performance of the Department of Education.”  According to Aiello, IBO oversight would extend beyond budget, contracts, and bidding questions to issues of testing, student data and research.  “It’s a matter of credibility,” he said, citing apparent contradictions between the city’s stated gains on reading and math scores and flat-lining values on national assessments.  If accountability’s the theme, as Bloomberg-Klein declaim loud and often, it seems sensible that it has to work two ways.  

Sensible’s one thing, Albany’s quite another.  Whether the recommendations become law will be determined by the State Legislature — and influenced, no doubt, by the myriad interest groups that each have a stake in the issue. 

Well, the weekend news about yawning grad-rate gaps between boys and girls sank like a stone in the mainstream press. Now comes this small but earnest effort to bring boys/young men to college – from veteran reporter and education blogger Richard Whitmire, who says that by 2015, twice as many girls as boys will attend American colleges. (For an oddly-titled counterpoint, consider the Sun’s daunting college-tuition economics primer.)

It’s no news that the gender gap starts early and widens over time. Jon Sciezka, former teacher and kid-lit rock star, created GuysRead.com to help teachers, parents, and boys find compelling alternatives to traditional narratives — think nonfiction and bathroom humor for starters. If you’ve got a reluctant boy reader on your hands or a daughter whose literary appetite spans beyond the conventional “girl” books in libraries and bookstores, take a look. Sciezka’s anthology of guy-writer and -illustrator recollections alone is fantastically entertaining and inspiring, too, for avid fans of Professor Poopy-Pants and his happy ilk.

First day of school, uptown and down-, and Chancellor Joel Klein has ambitious plans to drop in on five city schools, one in each borough, to ring in the new school year.

After starting at PS 62 in the Bronx, Klein next heads to the new, multi-million-dollar Gregorio Luperon High School for Science and Mathematics campus on 165th Street in Washington Heights. Then, it’s off to Queens, to visit with students and teachers at Corona’s long-embattled, now rising middle school, IS 61. Next stop, 1pm, Brooklyn — at the all-boys Excellence Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant , where classrooms are named for prestigious colleges. Finally, Klein’s trek wraps up in Staten Island, at the much-lauded, ADA-accessible PS 58, Space Shuttle Columbia School.

Quite the whirlwind tour! And quite the opening to the administration’s final full academic year in office — mayoral control conversations continue to swirl, but Klein says he’s willing to consider staying on as Chancellor, even post-Bloomberg. (Whether the mayor might stay in office is unclear, as Comptroller William Thompson’s concerns about term limits highlight.)

From the grand tour to the grass roots: How was the first day at your child’s school? Let us know if you’ve run into bus fiascoes, enrollment tangles, or other logistical problems. And let us know, too, if something went particularly well: Did your child’s teacher make a great first impression? Did a lively schoolyard scene make the first day a little more appealing? Any particularly great principals who have reached out to families? Good news more than welcome, as we start fresh, hoping for the best, for our city and our children.

Late yesterday afternoon — yes, in the slowest hour of the calendar’s most languid news weekend– NY1 broke a story on gender gaps in high school graduation.  Based on stats released on Sunday, the story says girls graduate ahead of boys by a margin of about 10 percent — a pattern that’s held for many years.  The grad gap between races persists here, too, with 57 percent of African-American girls graduating (compared with 44 percent of their brothers and boy cousins), and 54 percent of Hispanic girls earning their diplomas, compared with 21 percent of Hispanic boys.  (Overall, nearly three-quarters of all girls graduate high school in four years; fewer than two-thirds of boys can say the same.)

DOE has “convened a committee ” to investigate.  (Incredible that no such committee has been created until now, as gender- and race-based gaps are fixtures of the graduation-rate conversation.)  No comment yet from the NY State Education Department, who may be taking Labor Day off.   

Above and beyond the glum news, can anyone speak to the timing of its release?  Timing like this, poised for speedy burial in the last-summer-weekend news hole, does make one wonder.