Update: PS 9, PS 151
Parents of Manhattan’s PS 9 students whose gifted & talented qualifying tests were lost are still waiting for results from the repeat round of tests, a delay that the Department of Education attributes to some students’ unavailability for re-testing.Tests were scored by hand here in New York at Tweed, but had to be sent to Pearson, the test company in Texas, DOE spokesperson Andy Jacob says, in order to convert raw scores into percentile scores. Why this conversion couldn’t be accomplished electronically isn’t clear — but what’s certain is testing results are late in getting out to waiting families. Jacob says parents will get news today, Thursday. We’ve asked if the application deadline will be changed to reflect the timing delay and will post details when they’re known.
Upper East Side families zoned for PS 151 will learn today at 12:30 of the school’s new site and planned opening in September — hot on the heels of Jeff Coplon’s damning kindergarten feature in New York magazine. Again, details to follow.
News confirmed: As expected, the Chancellor announced that PS 151 would reopen this fall in the former site of Our Lady of Good Counsel School on E. 91st Street. In the Department of Education’s official announcement, the principal of the school, Samantha Kaplan, said that the school’s curriculum would relate to “a neighborhood that is abundant with cultural institutions, historic landmarks and parks all of which provide authentic learning experiences.”
A small footnote at the bottom of the press release notes the the DOE has “reached a preliminary agreement with the Archdiocese of New York to lease P.S. 151’s new building on a short-term basis. The DOE is in negotiations with the Archdiocese to finalize terms.”
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Is there any hope at all that we will ever get the results of the retest? First they were promised on Friday, then Tuesday, now the promise is Friday afternoon. The other outrage on the retest situation is that according to more than one child, at least one test administrator refused to read the children the test instructions. Many of these kids are in kindergarten and certainly the instructions should have been read to them. The way the DOE has mishandled this entire situation is unbelievable.
Comment by Anonymous — May 28, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
That is great news for the PS 151 families.
Comment by Anonymous — May 28, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
Helen- I have greatly appreciated your coverage of this year’s admissions process, kindergarten overcrowding, etc. I would love however, for you to shed some light on what’s going on outside of districts 2 and 3. I live in District 10 (although my son attends an unzoned school in Manhattan due to the poor quality of our zoned school). I just read the article you cited above and was struck by the following observations:
“Up until a few years ago, rich white neighborhood schools freely offered variances to families fleeing inner-city “dead zones.” But with in-zone demand swamping supply, the variance is now a relic of the past.”
and
“In the northwest corner of the Bronx, the poorest urban county in the nation, District 10 leads the city in capped schools—seven by the count of the DOE, nine by that of Marvin Shelton, the president of the district’s Community Education Council. (The crush can only worsen this fall, given the closure of kindergartens at city-run day-care centers: more than 3,000 of the city’s least-advantaged 5-year-olds, thrown into the DOE’s Mixmaster.)”
How has Kindergarten and G&T admissions gone there? District 9? Etc…
Comment by Bronx mom — May 28, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
On the PS 9 OLSATs, are they still looking for the original lost tests in a warehouse in Texas? We parents have have been told yes, but is that only to make us stop complaining?
Comment by Anonymous — May 28, 2009 @ 6:47 pm
#1 There are verbal and NON-verbal portions of the test. The numbers are broken down by each portion and you can see how your child did on each section. Perhaps the children were referring to the non-verbal part where they are not supposed to give directions. My K daughter also told me about “the part you had to figure out on your own.”
Comment by Anonymous — May 28, 2009 @ 11:40 pm
Bronx mom, you ask good questions about Districts 9 and 10. Parents and commenters are our ‘ears on the ground’ — so if you’ve heard something we should know, send in a comment and we’ll check it out. The issue of daycares closing and sending extra kids to the city schools is real, but of course, not confined to the Bronx (which the article seems to infer).
anonymous at 6:47, your comment is the first I’ve heard that DOE/Pearson may still be looking for the lost tests. I’ll check, but it seems to me that if they offered a second round of tests, whether they find the first set or not is moot.
Comment by helen — May 29, 2009 @ 10:08 am
I wish I had more info about what’s going on in the Bronx. However, both of my children attend school in Harlem (one in district 4 and the other in a Catholic school pre-k). My neighborhood papers haven’t been covering pre-k, K and G&T admissions. I don’t have any friends/neighbors applying to schools in the Bronx. I’m just wondering what’s happening in my home district, especially as I anticipate going through middle school admissions in the coming year for my oldest child. It was a frustrating process doing pre-k admissions last year partly because my zoned school didn’t even have a pre-k class. I read the blogs and hear about disappointed parents who were wait-listed at their zoned schools. What about those families all around the city without a zoned pre-k class? Or no G&T program in your district or zoned school? Or classes held in dismal trailers- I mean “annexes”- (which is where I was for 1st grade in a district 9 school all the way back in the 70’s!)?
This is not a district 2 and 3 crisis. It’s been a crisis for much of the city for decades. Districts 2 and 3 are just last to join the party!
Comment by Bronx mom — June 1, 2009 @ 2:25 pm