Last spring we reported that the Department of Education issued a ban on hiring new teachers due to budget cuts. Instead, principals were urged to hire teachers from the pool of excessed teachers — those who lost their jobs due to schools closing, or staff cuts, but who continue to receive a full salary, even though they are not in the classroom.

A week into the new school year, Chancellor Klein reiterated his call for principals to hire excessed teachers. In his weekly letter to principals, Klein said there are 1,500 teachers in the excessed pool, 500 more than last year. “This is a fiscal liability in this budget climate, and we must reduce it,” he writes. He goes on to point out there are 1,100 teacher vacancies in the city’s schools.

Klein imposed a hiring deadline of Oct. 30 and insists that most vacancies be filled with “internal staff.” For those schools which are unable to fill the positions by that date, the DOE “may be be forced to take back the dollars budgeted for those positions to pay for the increase in teachers in the excess pool.” (more…)

While GothamSchools joined Chancellor Klein on his annual five-borough, back-to-school tour, The New York Times’ City Room blog followed a few students as they embark on a new school year. We were particularly intrigued by the scene at PS 19 in Corona, Queens, where the Times said “confusion reigned.”

Though the K-5 school enrolls nearly  2,000 students and some classes are housed in trailers, the line of families hoping to enroll their children “extended down the better part of the block.” According to the post, the school is one of 27 that still had a kindergarten wait list in July.

What was the scene like at your  school this morning? Does your school still have students waiting to enroll? Let us know below.

Since 2002, under the leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city has closed more than two dozen large, unruly high schools and replaced them with small high schools, each enrolling fewer than 600 students. Many hoped the more intimate environment of the smaller schools would allow more students to thrive. A 68-page report released today during a conference at The New School, gives the small schools reform effort mixed reviews.

Small schools offer a more personalized setting, where staff knows students’ names and attendance and graduation rates are higher than at large schools, the report documents. It cautions, however, that teachers and principals at small high schools leave their jobs at a higher rate, and that attendance and graduation rates drop the longer schools stay open. The report, the culmination of an 18 month investigation by the Center for New York City Affairs, also finds that the opening of small schools and the closing of large schools,  has “had a harmful impact on thousands of students,” who still attend large high schools. Those schools have had to absorb increasing numbers of high-needs students.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who spoke at the meeting, disputed some of the report’s findings. He pointed out that, over the past few years, the “graduation rate went up in all schools,” not just the new small schools. He defended the practice of closing failing high schools. “[Placing] low-performing students together in large high schools, is impersonal and it’s not going to work.”

Some large high schools have found success by emulating the small schools model within their buildings. Stephen Duch, principal of Hillcrest High School, in Queens, said his neighborhood school improved by dividing students into seven smaller learning communities.

Duch sat on the panel of education experts who spoke about some of the complex issues underlying large urban school districts and the convoluted high school admission and choice process in New York City. Clara Hemphill, one of the report’s authors and former Insideschools.org director, moderated the panel. According to Hemphill, “parents who are well-educated and speak English are better off to navigate the system.”

Pedro Noguera, a New York University professor and public school parent said that while middle class parents “will do everything they can to get their kids into a good school,” the “poor kids are being left out of the better schools.”

He also raised the civil rights issue of segregation in public schools. “Racial integration does not get talked about at all,” Noguera said.  ”Looking at black and Latino males, not has much changed. They’re overrepresented in the failing schools,” many of which are large schools in poor neighborhoods, he said.

Eric Nadelstern, Chief Schools Officer at the Department of Education said, “Simply the act of closing those large failing schools made schools less segregated. Our schools have never been more integrated than before.”

The report recommends that the DOE do more to help large high schools be successful; create more midsize high schools, which post similar rates of graduation and attendance as small schools; offer more support to special education students and English Language Learners, and not “assume that all 13-year-olds have good judgment” when selecting a high school.

Editor’s Note: Insideschools’ blogger Helen Zelon was one of the report’s authors.

NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policy makers Need to Know is a compilation of essays about the recent years of mayoral control. Bloomberg-Klein educational policies are examined under a microscope by 17 well-known researchers and activists who have often criticized the mayor’s and chancellor’s initiatives. Commentators and researchers include: Diane Ravitch, well-known academic; Deborah Meier, pioneer progressive educator; Leonie Haimson, founder of Class Size Matters and publisher of this report; and Patrick Sullivan, former Manhattan member of the Panel for Educational Policy.Their essays challenge the results of testing and other data that the Department of Education cites as proof of its success; disputes the claims that DOE policies promote equity among various ethnic groups, English language learners, and children with special needs; calls into question the approach to curriculum and methodology as either too progressive or too prescriptive; and calls for greater parent, teacher, and community voice. Not surprisingly, all of the essays are critical, but not all of the writers share the same view. As the introduction proclaims, “These essays are our effort to ignite a genuine debate and dialogue about the future of the New York City public schools.” The debate about the best way to improve schools is likely to continue no matter who is in charge. These essays add facts, figures, and a range of opinions to inform that discussion.

Students who are English Language Learners are not well-served in the city’s new, small high schools, according to a report released today by Advocates for Children and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. When Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, 28.5 percent of students learning English graduated from high school in four years; now,  only 23.5 percent of English Language Learners graduate on time.

The report, called Empty Promises, takes a close look at two large Brooklyn high schools with established programs for English Language Learners. After the schools were characterized as failing by the Department of Education, they were dismantled and replaced by numerous small high schools sharing the old high-school campuses. Notably, the small schools were permitted by the DOE to exclude English Language Learners (and high-need special education students) until 2007.

Tomorrow, the Center for New York City Affairs releases Pass or Fail: What’s Next for New York City’s High Schools?, a comprehensive report on small-school reforms and school choice. The  morning event will feature Chancellor Klein and a panel of education thinkers, including NYU’s Pedro Noguera and the DOE’s Eric Nadelstern, moderated by the report’s senior editor (and Insideschools founding editor) Clara Hemphill. We’ll post a link to the report tomorrow.

(Editor’s Note: In the interest of disclosure, I’m among a team of reporters who also contributed to the project.)

In 2002, Mayor Mike Bloomberg won the right to control New York City public schools for seven years. The state law is due to expire on June 30, and unless the New York State Legislature acts, the mayor will lose much of his ability to direct the school system, including the all-important power to appoint the chancellor and to control votes on the Panel for Educational Policy. As the deadline looms, legislators are vetting different proposals while opponents of mayoral control continue to rally for changes to the existing system.

Prior to mayoral control, public schools were run by a seven-member Board of Education (BOE) typically composed of prominent New Yorkers, some of whom were professional educators and education activists. Each borough president appointed one BOE member, and the mayor appointed the remaining two. Under the current system, a Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) has 13 members, eight appointed by the mayor, and one by each borough president. The PEP members serve at the will of the mayor or the borough presidents who appointed them. The mayor also chooses the chancellor, and all superintendents of the 32 community school districts. There are also 32 local school boards, called Community District Education Councils (CECs) and citywide special education and high school education councils, which are elected by a school’s PTA officials.

The issue has mobilized education stakeholders to testify and rally in support of their point of view. While most educators and school advocates don’t want to return to 2002, many want to tighten the reins on the mayor’s power and restore parents’ role in policy making. What and how much should be controlled by the mayor depends on which mayoral control coalition you speak to, but there is consensus on the need for more parent voice and more transparency about achievement data and Department of Education finances. Below is a round-up of some of the most active advocates on the issue, with a sampling of their recommendations. You can read their full reports and agendas at their websites. (more…)

This morning, Chancellor Joel Klein welcomed students back to PS 19, in Corona, Queens.

Twenty schools reopened today; 17 are still closed but will open later this week. See the Department of Health website for official information on H1N1 management.

Today, Chancellor Joel Klein previewed budget cuts at the city’s schools in a message sent to all principals. The news is good or bad, depending on your point of view — and your school’s fiscal status, he said.

“In aggregate,” Klein wrote, “the total dollars in school budgets will be reduced by 3.8 percent.”

In specifics, which he described at a briefing today at Tweed, more than 40 percent of schools may experience cuts of 4.9 percent, while others, such as the approximately 80 schools with large Title I populations, might “get a slight bump” in funding, Klein said.

Schools that managed to save and “roll over” funds from Fiscal Year 09, which ends on June 30th, will experience less severe cuts than those who spent their budgets down, said Klein.

“To be clear: if you rolled over money, the good news is you will be able to spend that money. We are not cutting the money you rolled forward,” he wrote in his letter to principals. Schools were cautioned to save money from this year to plan for the next, although the rate and ability to save varies from school to school. The cut is designed to save approximately $318 million in the coming fiscal year, in addition to the $100 million in midyear cuts.

Principals will be responsible for making decisions about whether to cut programs — Saturday school, after school programming and professional development were three options the Chancellor mentioned — or to trim staff.

“Most schools will be able to find significant portions of this in OTPS [Other Than Personnel Services].” But school leaders are free to lay off staff, “if an aide or a para that they feel is more cuttable than a program,” Klein explained.

At LaGuardia High School, our student blogger writes that upper-level math courses will be snipped.

Specific budgets for each school will be presented to principals tomorrow, and according to the DOE, posted to the DOE website.

The city’s budget woes will force a ban on new teacher hiring, reports the Times (today and last week), the News, and others. The teacher’s union has high praise for the new strategy, which aims to place ‘excessed’ teachers, often languishing in DOE rubber rooms, back into classrooms citywide. Multi-million dollar savings are anticipated, based on projections by the New Teacher Project, which met with significant UFT derision only last year. (The worrisome projected attrition in the profession, highlighted in an April report, seems to have been forgotten.)

Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have long beseeched the ‘best and brightest’ at American colleges and universities to consider teaching as a profession. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Barack Obama have often said the same, and consistently support efforts to elevate the status of teaching as a competitive, desirable career choice — as it is in many world cultures whose students outshine their U.S. counterparts.

What’s it to be? Can the city be pro-teacher and anti-hiring? Can city leaders credibly encourage talented young professionals and committed career-changers to consider teaching — and then say, ’sorry, not this year’? It appears the answer is, “Yes, they can — and yes, they have,” although the net result, for the city’s students, teachers, and schools, remains uncertain. Not to mention, a very large gamble.

Clarification:   Teachers who will be hired for the coming school year are mainly those who were assigned to the reserve pool of teachers whose schools have been closed, reconfigured, or otherwise restructured so that their jobs are no longer open.  Educators assigned to the “rubber rooms” face disciplinary evaluations before they may return to the classroom.  

Update: The scores for New York City schools and charter schools have been posted.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein celebrated the city’s gains on English Language Arts test scores in Washington, D.C. yesterday even as the State’s new Regents head, Merryl Tisch, characterized the same gains as “moderate” — a perfect object lesson in how the same set of numbers can be used to support different points of view.

The biggest news, according to the Department of Education’s Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott at yesterday’s press briefing, was an 11-point gain from 2007 to 2008 — the largest single-year gain since annual state testing of third through eighth-graders began in 2006. Rises in middle school scores were attributed by the DOE to its middle-school initiatives — in place for less than six months when the actual tests were taken. Officials also credited the abundance of data-driven analysis made available to schools, and the hard work of teachers, principals and the city’s parents.

Neither official could dismiss the role of test prep — which Bell-Ellwanger characterized as “test sophistication,” a term Walcott praised and adopted — in the rising test scores. “If they’re familiar with the [state learning] standards, they do better on the test,” said Bell-Ellwanger. “It’s about skills-building.” Walcott added. “Just because students know how to take the test — there’s nothing wrong with that. We all take tests in life. Now, more and more students, especially students of color, are becoming more sophisticated. We’re preparing them for the rest of their lives.” (Former DOE testing czar Robert Tobias, now an NYU professor, told the Daily News, “It’s kind of like how you get to Carnegie Hall - practice, practice, practice.”)

Statewide trends showed a similar rise in overall scores, as did scores in other big cities. Scores in Buffalo outpaced scores in New York, and scale scores — the actual number that places a child at the bottom, middle, or top of the four proficiency levels — showed more modest progress. As ever, girls outpaced boys on the standardized exams and younger students scored higher than middle-schoolers (even with the rise in middle school scores). The storied gap between the races, which had loomed at over 30 percent in years past, has lessened over time, to a 26 percent gap between black and white eighth-graders and 27 percent between Hispanic and white eighth-graders.

It’s hard to know how to receive news that proficiency scores for students with special needs and those who are English Language Learners have “tripled” since 2002. On first hearing, that’s great news — but looking at the stats, only about a third of children in each subgroup earned scores that were proficient or better (level 3 or 4), news that’s much less encouraging than it might first appear.

This afternoon the Chancellor is back in town, after joining the Mayor and strange bedfellows Newt Gingrich and Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday for a meeting with President Barack Obama, to announce ELA scores for New York City’s charter schools. Stay tuned.

The hundreds of kindergarteners on waiting lists for schools all over the city are not the only sign of crowding in the schools, as many schools fear being forced to open extra classes in rooms that are now used for art and music. Rather than looking for the source of these failures in enrollment projections or capital planning, the Department of Education is going on the offensive against parents. In this case, their target is parents and parent associations who fund part-time arts, chess, and assistant teachers to make up for DOE shortfalls. The new DOE approach threatens to end services for hundreds if not thousands of children.

In a series of letters and school visits, the DOE has asserted that parents must hand their money over to DOE, subject to DOE rules about timing and amounts, before that money can be used to pay for part time aides and enrichment. A few years ago Klein abolished Project Arts, the program that used to reserve funds to ensure that all public school kids would receive music, dance, and visual arts. Now the DOE is trying to crack down on parents’ efforts to provide access to these fundamentals of a decent education. (more…)

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer weighs in on the mayoral control debate, with a report that urges strengthening Community Education Councils (CECs) and increasing their independence, by transferring their training and supervision from the Department of Education’s Office of Family Engagement to the offices of the city’s five borough presidents. Stringer says his proposal reflects the “desire to give parents more of a voice in the education decisions that affect their children” — and that the move could mean savings of up to $5 million, if the work now assigned to OFEA were undertaken by borough president office staff.

From Brooklyn, City Council member (and public school parent) Bill de Blasio charges $57.3 million in overspending by the DOE, on “unnecessary tests, courier services, and an expanded press operation, with a seven-person ‘Truth Squad’” — press monitors who follow DOE coverage. (Gotham Schools has details here, including $10,000 a-school-day fees for courier services.) De Blasio illustrates his charges with a nifty chart, comparing moneys spent with an ‘average’ teacher’s salary of $55,000 a year. While it’s a far stretch to think that DOE would abandon its data management system ARIS or dramatically scale back accountability, their cost together would support almost 700 teachers, a calculus many parents might prefer.

Chancellor Klein threatens layoffs for up to 2000 teachers; de Blasio identifies expenditures that could fund more than 1000 teaching positions. Perhaps these savings are in his sights as a contender for the post of Public Advocate — or in Stringer’s field of vision as he contemplates a 2010 Senate run. It’s spring; high season for budding campaigns — and budget fights.

Those who like to read between the lines should peruse the sheaf of letters printed today on the Times‘ editorial page in response to last week’s profile-in-power of Chancellor Joel Klein. One has to wonder how many letters are rejected for every letter published and how the mix of pro and con — and professional-academic writers versus plain citizens — is decided.

Also worth noting is David Brooks’ column, praising President Obama’s recent education address. But it’s funny how parenthetical phrases can reveal an essential difference in understanding. Here’s what Brooks writes, in the context of Obama’s proposal to scale up merit pay:

“…[I]t would increase merit pay for good teachers (the ones who develop emotional bonds with children) and dismiss bad teachers (the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed).”

Brooks’ definition of good and bad teachers is not what’s rewarded by Klein and the accountability crowd at DOE, where merit is correlated with academic progress, as measured by test scores, and reflected in annual progress reports. Teachers and schools get high grades and cash for raising achievement, how they do it isn’t the issue. While one would like to believe that building strong personal relationships helps kids make academic progress, it is by no means the DOE’s yardstick or criteria for merit pay. (Learning environment surveys touch on teaching — and contribute only slightly to a school’s progress report grade.)

Does David Brooks believe that the teachers who the kids love get DOE love, too? “No picnic” is right.

Much of the public debate, blog buzz, and press coverage of President Obama’s education address yesterday has focused on his strong endorsement of charter schools, which are publicly funded schools managed by private, non-DOE authorities, some for profit and some not. The Times highlighted Obama’s call to lift the cap on charter development (in place in 26 states and the District of Columbia), and on merit pay for teachers. The News gathered a consensus of largely positive (if generalized) responses from education leaders like Joel Klein and teachers-union head Randi Weingarten. The Post focused on merit pay along with Obama’s charter mandate.

The simple fact of an education debate at center stage is cause for a certain kind of celebration. But it’s worth remembering, as NYU education professor Pedro Noguera noted this morning, that charters serve a small minority of New York City students compared to traditional schools and that many charters (though not all) can choose to enroll certain kids and decline to work with children with special needs or who require English language instruction. A longer school day and year mean that most charter school teachers work without a union contract — even despite some teachers’ desire to organize – and that often charter school teachers are younger and less-seasoned than many of their public-school peers. Charters that share a building with a traditional elementary school often enjoy smaller classes and more ample resources — benefits of the charter structure — that can look unfair to kids, families, and teachers on the other side of the charter fence.

Bottom line, charter schools are a mixed bag, with some showing outstanding results and others mired in drill-and-kill, test-dense curricula. This will come as no surprise to those with experience in the city’s schools, where excellent schools coexist with so-so schools (and worse). My question is, if a rising tide lifts all boats — as Education Secretary said in a recent radio interview – how does diverting streams of that tide, as kids and their engaged, proactive families exit mainstream schools for charters, still help the whole?

Note: See our articles, published today, about the 24 new charter schools opening in the city in the fall of 2009 and their struggles to find spaces for their schools. We also have published previews of all of the new charter schools.

Earlier this week, a New York Magazine item by former New York Sun reporter Jacob Gershman asked whether Chancellor Joel Klein might lose his high perch in the contest for mayoral control, given Klein’s bad reviews by parents and law-makers at a recent hearing. Insideschools highlighted questions on the Department of Education’s contracts, covered by the Post and elsewhere — and tabled by City Council. Next, Gail Robinson, Gotham Gazette’s editor in chief, aka the Wonkster, gathered a passel of press clips in a post on the DOE’s dubious contract machinations. And today in the Times, Elissa Gootman’s front-page story asks whether Klein’s position might be on the mayoral-control chopping block. With remarks pro and con from ex-council member turned charter school impresario Eva Moscowitz and UFT/AFT head Randi Weingarten, and quotes both attributed and anonymous from Albany pols, has the Chancellor’s tenure become a political hot potato? (Even actor Alan Alda has something positive to say about his friend and pizza partner.)

An apparently unruffled chancellor posed for dramatic, sunlit photos as part of the Times interview — and expressed confidence in his work and the DOE’s vision of change. “There is no daylight” between the Klein and the mayor on education policy, he said. The feeling’s mutual, according to the mayor, who said “Maybe the best thing I ever did was pick the best chancellor any school system has ever had.” (But see GothamSchools for questions on how closely aligned the mayor and the chancellor really are.)

Both the mayor and the chancellor hail from the “you’ve gotta break some eggs to make an omelet” school. As D.C. schools chief (and Time magazine cover girl) Michelle Rhee said: “…Sometimes a leader can see things that other people can’t see, and has to push things that they know are the right things to push, and it takes other folks a little longer to get there.”

Well, it seems the “other folks” are getting restless. And the unrest is likely to percolate all spring. Whether it will result in change — and what that change might be — remains entirely open to speculation. (Which is expected to continue all spring, as well.)

Insideschools.org has learned about an overlooked bit of bureaucrat-ese that deserves wide exposure — and considerable challenge as well, especially given the Chancellor’s recent endorsement of parent involvement — see powertotheparents.org – and his administration’s long record of shutting down similar channels under the guise of school reform and restructuring.

Chancellor’s Regulation 660 prohibits ordinary public citizens, not to mention their elected representatives, members of the wider community, and advocates of every stripe, from attending Parent Association meetings unless express permission for their visit has been granted by a prior vote of the entire PA . That’s right: The whole parent association should approve any potential guests or speakers ahead of scheduled PA meetings. Here’s a snippet from the reg, and a link to a pdf of the whole text (see page 54, II D for the section below).

“Other than the principal or his/her designee, outside observers and speakers are prohibited from attending unless the PA bylaws specifically allow attendance by invitation of the association after the vote. A PA must vote to invite an outside speaker for a specific purpose at a particular meeting.”

What this would mean, in practice, is that attendance at PA meetings would be strictly and completely controlled by the PA itself, excluding any and all outside observers, including prospective parents, expert speakers, consultants and others interested in the city’s schools. It means that you, as a parent, can’t drop in on a PA meeting at a school you’re considering for your child, because you’re not yet part of that school community. Any guests or speakers must be approved by prior vote, after which an invitation may (or may not) be extended. This doesn’t seem, on face value, like a strategy that’s designed to increase parent participation. This seems the total opposite, a directive that’s designed to stifle communication and profoundly inhibit dialogue.

Whether the regulation violates state education law, Section 414(1)(c) which permits public access to school property that’s used for “social, civic, and recreational meetings” is, as the wonks say, above my pay grade. (But worry not, the NYCLU is learning more about the regulation, too. ) And whether Parent Associations will actually bar speakers and uninvited public from their meetings seems highly debatable. One activist PA president listed more than 25 guests and speakers who have enriched school meetings this year alone — and invited the Chancellor to fire him for violating the regulation.

The core question: What is the DOE trying to prevent, in this regulation? And following on that, if the DOE and Chancellor Klein actually intend to increase the voice of parent-stakeholders in school reform — as they say they do — how does shutting people out of public meetings achieve that purpose?

Just a few weeks after Mayor Bloomberg warned that 14,000 city DOE workers, including teachers, might be laid off, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced - at a Brooklyn charter school - that federal funds would be allocated to states in time to avert such layoffs across the country.

“We need to invest this money quickly, thoughtfully and transparently to protect kids, create jobs and drive reforms,”said Duncan. UFT/AFT President Randi Weingarten, principals’ union President Ernest Logan, Chancellor Joel Klein, and Mayor Bloomberg stood nearby, nodding throughout his remarks.

Out of the $100 billion in emergency funding being granted to American schools, New York City schools can expect about $1.9 billion, Duncan said. The City anticipates that approximately $300 million of those funds will be to expand Title 1 funding, $100 million will expand Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) funding, and more than $25 million will be earmarked for educational technology. “This stimulus package saves a generation of kids,” Weingarten said.

The total amount of money being granted by the federal government, broken down by state, is now available online.

“This in once-in-a-lifetime money,” Duncan said. He emphasized that while the majority of funding will likely be used to plug budget short-falls and save teaching jobs, some will also be used for innovation, including $5 billion reserved for grants supporting achievement-gap-closing initiatives at the state or local level.

“We have to keep moving forward,” the Education Secretary stressed. “We can’t take a step back.”

The Secretary also said that he will work to establish common standards across the nation, and he voiced his support for standardized tests as a means of measuring progress. (No direct mention was made of No Child Left Behind [NCLB] President Bush’s signature education policy, which comes up for review, and possible revision, this year.) Mayor Bloomberg then jumped in to heartily agree on the testing point in particular, saying that it was “outrageous” to argue against testing.

The optimistic mood amongst the ed bigwigs outlasted the press conference, when most of the photographers and crews had left. Someone from the school asked Weingarten to take a picture of her sometimes-nemesis/sometimes-friend Klein with a group of students. “Say ‘weekend’!” said Weingarten, alluding to the fact that unlike most city children, the charter school students didn’t get a vacation this week. A few minutes later, Chancellor Klein was behind the camera as several teachers posed with Duncan. “We should get a picture of our Chancellor taking this picture!” one teacher said. Staffers for Duncan, Klein, and Weingarten stood by, looking slightly bemused.

But on her way out the door, it was back to business for Weingarten. “I would like to talk to your teachers,” she said to someone from Explore Charter School, which, like many charter schools, is not part of the teachers union.

In keeping with the positive, polite and largely uncritical spirit of the day, the educator nodded and smiled - congenial but noncommittal - and went back to work.

In a hearing that began promptly at 10 a.m. and continued well into the afternoon — with testimony scheduled from more than 65 witnesses, including heavy hitters like Learn NY/Harlem Children’s Zone Geoffrey Canada and New Visions president Robert Hughes — the State Assembly Education Committee, headed by Catherine Nolan, convened a hearing on mayoral control in their offices at 250 Broadway.

Notably, Chancellor Joel Klein appeared at the hearing to testify in favor of mayoral control, accompanied by Deputy Mayor Derek Walcott and other officials from the DOE. His support for mayoral control was no surprise; what was notable was that Klein appeared at all, a fact Assembly Member Nolan pointedly remarked on. This hearing, she said, “was the first opportunity the Chancellor has given us to question him” in the years that Nolan has headed the state education committee. (Years, plural, without a hearing with the Chancellor. No typo.)

Committee members posed questions to the Chancellor — some barbed, some thoughtful, some both — who responded, often with the catch-phrase “we need to do a better job on that,” to criticisms of the law and its consequences: The reduction of parent voices, the virtual eradication of district superintendencies, the political evisceration of both the Board of Ed and Community School Boards, which predated the current network of Community Education Councils. The net effect, to an observer’s eye, was skillful, gracious deflection of direct criticism, framed by the insta-acknowledgment that the work was ongoing. “What we have created is not perfect,” said the Chancellor as the hearing opened. “Our work has not been without mistakes.” And of the mayoral control statute itself: “This is not a sacred text — these are not tablets.”

After more than two hours of back and forth, the Chancellor and his entourage were spirited out a side doorway, leaving the hearing. Subsequent witnesses, including City Council Member and Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson and Comptroller (and former Board of Education president) William Thompson addressed the panel. UFT President Randi Weingarten and Principal’s union head Andy Logan spoke, as well, later followed by former lawmakers, historians, and scores of advocates, school leaders, parent activists, and students.

While no individual (at least before 3 p.m.) stated outright the wish to abolish mayoral control, many, at the witness table and in the audience, strongly voiced the desire for greater transparency in DOE decision-making. They asked for an independent agency to oversee both budgets and school data, including test scores and grad rates, and for stronger, deeper, and more robust parent involvement. It’s hard to know what the folks left on the street might have said. After Chairwoman Nolan announced that the Fire Marshal would close the hearing down if the aisles and other spaces weren’t cleared, scores of people were left waiting outside 250 Broadway in the bitter cold and tons more sat in an overflow room with just the audio the proceedings piped in.

Additional hearings take place later this month and next in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island. It is not known whether the Chancellor will return to this forum to field and respond to questions. It is certain, however, that hundreds of people have plenty to say — and that the debate, in the sunset season of this law, is long overdue.

More than 80 percent of the 700-plus readers who responded to our blog poll this week strongly objected to the proposal, advanced by the Mayor and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, to lay off thousands of city teachers. Much smaller segments expressed cautious concern (10 percent) or weren’t much threatened by a “forced purge” (6 percent). DOE, if you’re listening, the city’s parents are speaking loud and clear: Find other ways to save money without punishing the city’s students. Look here for the results.

This week, we’re asking readers to think about how the DOE shares important news with young students. Parents of 8th-graders, you will have wrestled with this question already — and even if your child’s still in the sandbox, you, and she, may confront the issue eventually. We welcome your responses.

Today at noon, Mayor Bloomberg will give his annual budget address – the last before the November election. The mayor’s budget is expected to include 23,000 job cuts, nearly a billion in new taxes, and other “doomsday” strategies to stanch a $4 billion budget gap. (Slim consolation in the Times’ report that things aren’t quite as bad as they could be.)

Earlier this week, Chancellor Klein testified in Albany that up to 15,000 education jobs are at risk; in a statement yesterday that echoed Klein’s threat (and, possibly, predicted similar challenges for organizations like New York City Teaching Fellows), Teach for America’s New York office announced drastic cutbacks in recruitment and funding. GothamSchools has details here; their prediction that there won’t be too many eager 22-year-olds teaching in the city’s schools come September seems entirely plausible. (Of note, more of the new teachers who do get hired will likely be placed in charter schools, which characteristically feature longer workdays and a longer school year — and, rarely, union protection. The truism of sending the least-proven teachers into the toughest settings is, unfortunately, looking all too true again.)

Tune in here to watch the Mayor speak.

Sunday morning talking-wonk fans may want to tune in to Face the Nation this week, when Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is slated to appear as a guest, on CBS at 10:30 AM.

News that the DOE will close three schools arrived with a thud; the schools will close in June, and open, reconfigured (or reimagined entirely) in September. The schools on the present chopping block include CES 90 in the Bronx, MS44 in Manhattan, and PS 225 in Queens, a pre-K-8 school that will split into two schools, elementary and middle, in its next incarnation.

Once again, the DOE’s decision to close public schools combined stealth and executive fiat — the first harbinger was UFT president Randi Weingarten’s email that arrived in journalists’ ‘in’ boxes. Communities will be given a chance to participate in discussions about the new schools, news reports say, but were offered no voice in the decision to close their ailing schools. In particular, the phase-out of MS44 on the Upper West Side came as a blindsided blow, especially to District 3 residents, whose CEC recently approved the DOE’s plan to relocate The Anderson School in the MS44 building. (Can it be possible that DOE didn’t know they would close the school when they proposed the resiting? Can it be possible that DOE knew but didn’t tell the CEC, or the community, of their plans to shutter the ailing school? Does the sun continue to rise in the east?)

Chancellor Joel Klein, speaking to a journalists’ group earlier this fall, reflected on the Bloomberg-Klein era to date with obvious pride in the rate and scale of school change. As for regrets, he said “there are some things we should have done differently. We should have figured out more effective ways to communicate with and engage the city. Things we did were effective, but were misunderstood.”

No misunderstanding today, Chancellor. DOE decides, taxpayers and parents don’t: Score zero for communication and community engagement. And the early holiday cheer is only beginning: Additional school closures are expected to be announced next week.

Washington, DC schools chief Michelle Rhee gets the star (or starry-eyed) treatment at TIME magazine this week, prompting praise, outrage, and critique, as has been her custom since becoming chancellor in 2007. But does her model of reform translate? Can Rhee’s initiatives ’scale up’ to the nation’s biggest cities?

Note, please, that Rhee’s entire portfolio includes 20 high schools; 21, if you count a small, K-12 school with fewer than 250 students. She’s responsible for 144 schools overall. That’s less than 10% of New York City’s total, and less than 5% of our high-school count. Even with the dedicated, dogged support of Chancellor Klein and the high-profile visibility (and considerable challenge) of turning around tough schools in the nation’s capital, does taking control of 20 high schools constitute a national agenda?

Two stories today focus harsh light on a bitter, if familiar, reality. While it’s far from news that poor kids and kids of color fare less well than their better-heeled, white and Asian peers, confirmation of these long-entrenched trends is never welcome.

In the Times, Manny Fernandez previews a study from NYU’s presigious Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy and its Institute for Education and Social Policy that documents academic shortfalls for kids living in public housing. The study compiles data on 343 public-housing projects and 112,000 children aged 5 to 18, 95% of whom are living in poverty, and 56% in single-parent homes. Although the report relies on troublingly old data, from 2002-2003, its conclusion is, unfortunately, entirely current: Lower fifth-grade test scores predicted higher dropout rates; obstacles at home profoundly affect students’ ability to learn, achieve, and succeed in school. And in the News, Merideth Kolodner documents a correlation between progress report grades and race: Schools that scored poorly on the city’s progress reports have higher-than-citywide-averages of African-American and Hispanic students.

Chancellor Klein’s in Australia this week; one only wonders what New York City’s complex experience with educating poor, urban, often under-served youth will mean to the folks Down Under.

The long-anticipated, $81,000,000 (yes, million) DOE Achievement Reporting and Innovation System known as ARIS has launched at last. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and DOE Accountability head James Liebman introduced journalists to the nimble, flexible data-management tool at a workshop this afternoon in downtown Brooklyn. Principals and other administrative leaders began working with ARIS last week and teachers are getting the good ARIS news just this week (via postcard in their school mailbox — so much for cutting edge e-tech). Families, however, will have to wait until the end of the current academic year to access information on their children.

ARIS consolidates the mythic Permanent Record (which doesn’t actually exist in a single, physical place, despite the admonitions of school deans and angry parents citywide) into a responsive, customizable database. Teachers who want to know which students passed which tests, or who came from other schools, or who have special-needs or English-language-learner designations, will be able to organize and access vast quantities of information, based on the DOE’s template. And as befits an era of social networking, ARIS permits teachers to blog, create virtual community groups both private and public, build wikis, share lesson plans, and access data and resources from online archives. It will also include a nifty attendance “speedometer,” according to Liebman, which color-codes each child’s attendance levels in green, yellow, and red and will be refreshed weekly.

Chancellor Klein praised the system, saying “the only thing I keep telling Jim [James Liebman] is, I want it to go faster and faster…” Klein also said that ARIS anticipates Bill Gates’ education accountability goals, outlined last week in Seattle — and said “for New York City teachers, the future is now,” predicting that cities nationwide will turn to New York as a model of data-driven instruction, likely earning strong support by Gates and other funders.

“New York is at the cutting edge, the vanguard,” Klein said — and in a moment animated as much by enthusiasm as political will — “and it will be, under Jim [Liebman]’s leadership, for the next several years.” So much for the mayoral control conversation and small matters like the election…

The results are in! And it turns out that a Catholic school in Queens ‘elected’ the winning candidate… again. High school students in the South Bronx had been holding their breath earlier this week to see who would win the presidential election. And on Wednesday, boys at Eagle Academy in Brooklyn were thrilled to learn about the man headed for the Oval Office: it “makes us think that we could accomplish anything when you put your mind to it,” one 11-year-old student explained. Younger students in Harlem were equally impressed; one second-grader said, “I’m so happy I don’t know what to do,” — a sentiment shared by many decades older. Down the street, students at a Harlem middle school shared their enthusiasm.

Several pundits wonder if Barack Obama will tap Chancellor Klein for Education Secretary. New York State’s education commissioner will resign in June after 14 years in the position, and Mayor Bloomberg is expected to fight to retain mayoral control now that he’s won round one in the fight to retain the mayorship. Sad news from Nevada last weekend: Terence Tolbert, a beloved top DOE official, died of a heart attack on Sunday, where he had been managing the state’s Obama campaign.

The Post realized that a high-paying position in the DOE, the director of middle schools, has been vacant for months, and at a time when middle school reform has been given a lot of lip-service. Parents might get more (symbolic?) control if a plan to grant them “advisory votes” in Community Education Council elections gains traction, and the City Council has scheduled hearings into the controversial new gifted and talented admissions process, which has left fewer minorities with coveted spots in the program. The New York Times analyzed the specialized high school admissions process today and found that just like the kindergarten G&T admissions, there is a concerning racial imbalance.

Budget cuts were announced this week, along with a pared-down building agenda – principals are coping with these year’s cuts and already preparing for next year’s tougher budgets. Parents, DOE officials, and advocates battle over re-zoning proposals in District Three, and schools vie for a space in Riverdale that may not even be available next year, as promised. At another school in the Bronx, many children are taught in temporary trailers that have become anything but temporary. Elsewhere in the same borough, a neighborhood is relieved to be getting a much-needed new middle school. Students and teachers in most overcrowded high school buildings, however, will have make do – only two new high school buildings are slated to be built across the city during the next five years.

Beyond reading, writing and arithmetic, health classes are viewed as a vital addition to the pre-school course schedule at one school in the Bronx, and students at one city high school can take skateboarding for credit… now that is an innovative physical education option for the urban teen.

State Education Department Commissioner Richard Mills announced his plans to retire late last week. Mills sits at the head of a sweeping state-wide educational network, from the SUNYs and private/independent colleges and universities to the public schools (a giant portfolio in and of themselves), vocational rehab, museum/library/archive programs and oversight over four dozen professions.

How Mills’ exit from Albany will affect city youth is the subject of considerable speculation; the NY State Ed Dept.’s long-fraught relationship with the NYC DOE is sure to be tempered by the outcome of next year’s Mayoral election, and whether Chancellor Klein will remain at the head of the city’s schools.

It looks like the city and the schools might get four more years of Bloomberg and Klein; when push came to shove, the City Council’s Education Committee was proportionally more supportive of the mayor than the Council as a whole.On the other hand, 10 public school teachers filed a law suit on Wednesday arguing that the change breached voters civil rights. And in a second lawsuit, the city was sued after police handcuffed a 10-year-old special education student.

Other high profile school news: The $80 million data-management system the DOE bought hasn’t been working all fall (although a homegrown data-tracking system is thriving in Brooklyn) and well-regarded sociologists continue to question the city’s progress reports, which are due out soon for high schools. Crime may be down, but grand larceny is up in city schools, and a bureaucratic mess between the DOE and the Department of Sanitation is playing out on one truly messy Brooklyn street. Also in Brooklyn, a teen with special needs has been assigned to two schools, neither of which provided her with mandated services.

In good news, a new playground - the first of several to come - opened in Brooklyn thanks to a hefty donation. And New York was highlighted as one of the cities that requires green standards for new school buildings, plans for two of which were unveiled yesterday – and should be built cost-free to the city. And it turns out that 270 classic New York school buildings, some built a century ago and still in use, can be credited to one man.

In light of the DOE’s new policy on military recruitment of high school students, one elderly warrior-for-peace assembled her own army to fight back. A school in the Bronx is trying to harness the popularity of online communication into academic purposes, and the highly selective Hunter College High School has seen its applicant pool decline. Klein shared his philosophies and policies with a packed-house in Bridgeport, Conn., while an opinion piece in the Daily News argued that school’s budgets should be cut but the union is bribing politicians in Albany to keep the money flowing…

Bloomberg admitted that when he argues for renewal of mayoral control, he also hopes to continue as Mayor, despite the twice-voted term limits law currently on the books. But Bloomberg’s second major reason for wanting to stay in City Hall – the economic woes of late – has already wreaked havoc on schools’ budgets. Whether the state is doing enough to help continues a hot topic, and Wall Street donations to public education will certainly start drying up soon – meaning less, less, less. Would it be cheaper to allow high school students to take some classes online (and “at 3 a.m. in their pajamas if they desire”)? And a new program is bringing laptops created for students in developing countries to city classrooms at the wonderfully affordable sticker price of $200 each.

The Public Advocate explained her position on mayoral control – again – in the Daily News, and the Times analyzed the data used to compile the controversial school progress reports, demonstrating how manipulating the methodology yields different results for individual schools. City students’ standardized test scores are being used to generate yet another type of report card: teachers’ grades. The DOE doesn’t want teachers to wear political buttons to school; some teachers are now asking whether Klein’s prohibition is un-Constitutional. And the eternal debate over how to best teach English language learners was rehashed and re-argued in the Times this week.

Craving news that everyone can celebrate? Local kids are bucking the stereotype of nicotine-craving urban teens: dramatically fewer New York State teenagers are smoking than teens in the country as a whole. A $9-a-pack pricetag can be plenty persuasive…

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.

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.

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.

Chancellor Joel Klein has announced a new pilot program in 10 high-need grade schools to improve reading education, based on E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum (for reference, see his popular 1988 manifesto, Cultural Literacy, and the series of parent-focused education books that followed).

The K-2 program integrates phonics and content (no stranger to many early-grade classrooms), with an emphasis on nonfiction and classical sources, like mythology, as well as fiction. Reading gains for students in the pilot program will be compared with students in ‘control’ groups, who will participate in the current DOE reading curriculum.

Education academics and in-the-trenches teachers have long criticized the de-emphasis of phonics in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. In fact, many teachers routinely include phonics instruction, especially in classes with large numbers of students who are learning English, in addition to the mandated DOE reading curriculum.

Private funds have been raised to pay for the program, which will cost $2.4 million. New York is one of eight cities nationwide to use its classrooms as test labs for the program, which is designed to give students a foundation of knowledge along with reading mechanics and eventual proficiency. Other sites include a mix of rural and urban schools (with mixed academic needs) in Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Oklahoma, and the South Shore Charter Public School in Hull, Mass., where Dr. Hirsch’s son is the principal.

It’s not known whether parents can opt in or out of the program (or the control groups) or how the 10 high-need New York schools were chosen. All are in the “outer boroughs” — four in Queens, three in the Bronx, two in Brooklyn, and one in Staten Island.

As parents and students begin gearing up for the new school year, the news this week was dominated by the standard – yet colossal and complicated – contemporary education debates, including charter schools, standardized testing, and incentives.

Mayor Bloomberg kicked off the week by announcing that 18 new charter schools would open in the city this fall. The Times opened a Q and A between readers and James D. Merriman IV, the chief executive of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence. The Sun editorialized in favor of charter schools and private school vouchers. The Daily News wrote about Bay Ridge, Brooklyn parents who oppose a charter school moving into public school buildings.

A Newsday reporter who set out to prove that the Regents exams were easy by taking the U.S. History test unprepared scored a 97 and made his point. Meanwhile, students’ scores on the Advanced Placement tests were released, and the apparently mixed results of pay-for-scores programs vaulted the issue of monetary incentives back into the papers. Employees of the Princeton Review, a high-profile national testing company, made a serious computer error that resulted in 34,000 Florida public school students’ private information available to anyone online.

Several disheartening stories involved special education students: allegations of abuse in one city school, asbestos in another, and concerns over special education bus service for the fall. A disabled teacher sued, claiming his epilepsy cost him his job, and a national story about corporal punishment (legal in schools in 21 states but not New York) found that special education students – as well as minority and low income students – disproportionately felt the paddle.

And a couple of journalists used the end of the summer to ask key questions about the future. What will happen to No Child Left Behind, now that Bush is on his way out and a new president is on his way in? Will mayoral control be renewed by the state legislature, especially since Klein and Bloomberg have largely ignored politicians’ education opinions? And where does Obama really stand on education, as supporters of several different ­– and sometimes competing – initiatives claim to be in alignment with the candidate? Education mysteries abound.

Looks like Washington, D.C. schools head Michelle Rhee is borrowing another page from her mentor’s playbook; see this story for her proposal, modeled on Klein’s prototype, that students at 14 District middle schools earn up to $200 a month for steady attendance.

That’s some kind of walking-around money for young teens and forces some tough questions: What do we teach kids when we pay them to show up? And where’s the equity in rewarding some students but not others? What of the kids in schools who aren’t getting paid to come to school — do they strike for their ‘due wages’? Badger their parents for allowances that match the city’s incentive pay? The mind boggles.

In a signature transposition of business practice into the education environment, the Klein administration at the DOE has installed a range of mechanisms to pay people — teachers, principals, and students, at selected schools — for performance. Today’s Times story challenges the merits of a $2 million REACH incentive program (for REwarding ACHievement). Guess what? The results are a mixed bag.

Turns out more high-school students took Advanced Placement exams, which can earn college credit for high-scoring students. Fewer students passed, but a fraction more scored at the highest level, 5.

Promoters beg more time to show stronger results; critics say there are better ways to spend that kind of (private) money, despite similar programs’ rising popularity in schools nationwide. And you can bet that man-about-town Joel Klein will face sharp questions on the program in his three public appearances today, at a REACH briefing, an NAACP event in Brooklyn and a Teach for America welcome-teachers evening program. But a quote at the end of the story caught our eye: Kati Haycock, director of the DC-based Education Trust, says that “rich kids get paid for high grades all the time and for high test scores by their parents.”

Do you pay your kids for good grades? Do you reward effort (trying hard) or outcomes (the grade itself)? And what’s the line between motivation and bribe — between incentive and payoff? We don’t think parents have deep pockets for report-card shakedowns, but we could be wrong…

The State and the City finally released the 2007 high school graduation rate today, and the news is both heartening and discouraging, on more than a few counts.

First, the good news: The overall graduation rate continues to nudge upward from the swamp where it had long languished. For the city as a whole, 52.2% of students who started high school in 2003 (the 2003 cohort) graduated in four years. Another 3.6% graduated in August, via credit recovery and other recuperative programs (mention of which flummoxed the Mayor briefly at a press conference today). If this seems lower than the 60% that was so widely celebrated last year, it is — in years past, the city included GED-earners in the grad rate, unlike the State’s more stringent criteria, which the city now shares.

More Asian and white students continue to earn diplomas than their African-American and Hispanic classmates (bad news) but the gap between the races is narrowing — slightly (good news, but not that good): Nearly 71% and nearly 69% of Asian and white students graduate in four years; only 43% of Hispanic kids earn their diploma in the same time, as do just over 47% of African-American students. So while it’s true that grad rates are rising for African-American and Hispanic kids, it will be a long, long time before the academic playing field is even approximately equal. And demographics notwithstanding, boys continue to lag behind girls in academic achievement. But back on the good-news side, New York leads the state’s biggest cities in academic gains. On the bad-news side, the cities still lag well behind the state’s overall grad rate of 79.2%.

Less enthusiastic results were posted for English Language Learners, who Chancellor Klein identifies as “our greatest challenge.” ELL grad rates dropped in recent years and now have risen three points, to 23.5% for four-year grads and 32.4% for kids who stay in high school for five years (no typo on those stats). Students with disabilities showed slight change in their graduation rate (from 19.4% in 2006 to 19.1% in 2007. Good news, no drop; bad news, scant improvement.

The general tenor of the announcement this afternoon was celebratory but clear-eyed; the Mayor, sporting a spectacular tan, praised all involved, from Klein (also summer-bronzed) and Weingarten down into the academic trenches — teachers, principals, APs, parents, and of course the students, especially the kids who stick with high school into a fifth or sixth year. “That they didn’t do it in four years is immaterial,” said the Mayor, who added that staying longer in high school is “demonstrative of someone who wants to take charge of their life,” and graciously crediting Jennifer Medina’s Times story today as proof.

Still, Bloomberg acknowledged, “despite this heartwarming progress,” there’s “enormous room for improvement.” Notably, 38% of students don’t graduate in four years, and nearly 14% drop out. “It’s going to be very hard to get them back,” he said. (About 10% stay enrolled in high school beyond four years.) The dropout rate contracted slightly since last year, from 15% to 14.7%; we’re waiting for follow-up from the DOE on students who were discharged from school — and don’t show up in DOE records as students or dropouts.

Students now in high school can earn one of three diplomas — local, Regents, or Advanced Regents. About two-thirds of NYC grads earn a Regents diploma, which is good news — but not so good for the third who get less-rigorous Local credentials, and moot entirely for the kids starting high school next month, who are not eligible to earn the local diploma at all. We’ve asked the DOE for diploma and grad-rate details on the new small high schools and Career and Technical Education schools, and for more specific demographic and gender information — and we’ll report back whenever we hear more.

Let us know if you have questions; the State published a thick deck of data slides, and we’ll post links to specifics if there’s interest.

Update: A correction for clarity: The overall state graduation rate cited above, of 79.2%, reflects the grad rate for schools outside the state’s five biggest cities, and not the state as a whole. Regrets for any confusion.

John McCain (or his ghostwriter) spun an impressively bold segue from public-school reform to private-school vouchers in this editorial in the Daily News. Touting the Mayor and the Chancellor, along with Rev. Al Sharpton, as visionary ed reformers, McCain cites their efforts as evidence of school failure — anyone else miss the logic here? — and promises private- and religious-school vouchers as his vision of public school reform.

Read Sharpton’s praise for McCain here, if you’re curious.

Even with the spin, the editorial asks a big, legitimate question: Sharpton, Klein et al are at the forefront of the Education Equality Project, which defines education as an essential civil right for all Americans. Barack Obama, whose daughters attend private school, hasn’t yet weighed in. As the AFT-endorsed candidate, we’d welcome his views.

Yesterday, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and a glittering lineup of civic and state luminaries traipsed over to Brooklyn Heights’ rejuvenated elementary school, PS 8, to announce the construction of a new school annex, to be completed in 2011. Overcrowding has been a worry during the school’s resurgence, although the most recent data available show the school isn’t bursting at the seams — yet. The school has grown from 62% capacity in 2004 to 85% in 2006.

The school’s welcome revival has been the driving force behind increasing demand for seats; Chancellor Klein, quoted on WNYC, said that the new construction shows that the DOE is responsive to neighborhoods, not districts. (We’d like to see him try that logic with parents of high-school students who no longer have zoned, neighborhood high schools to attend.)

The Heights, long one of Brooklyn’s best-heeled bedroom communities, proved quite the draw on a sultry summer afternoon. According to the DOE, “Chancellor Klein was joined by Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm, Chief Family Engagement Officer Martine Guerrier, S[chool] C[onstruction] A[uthority] President Sharon Greenberger, Department of City Planning Director Purnima Kapur, PS 8 Principal Seth Phillips, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Councilman David Yassky, State Assemblywoman Joan Millman, State Senator Martin Connor, PTA co-President Tim Eldridge, Superintendent James Machen, PS 8 Assistant Principal Robert Mikos, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership President Joe Chan, Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy Deputy Director Nancy Webster, and Community Education Council representatives for School District 13.” Whew.

Nearly everyone took a turn at the mic: Klein, Walcott, Grimm, Greenberger, Guerrier, Phillips, Eldridge, Millman, Yassky, and Markowitz all contributed remarks.

Unfortunately, the building boomlet in Brooklyn Heights doesn’t include the development of new middle schools. Klein has stated that middle schools are his priority for the balance of the Mayor’s term; as summer melts into fall, the time is growing short to prove it.

With the real news slowing to a winter-molasses trickle, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings takes time out of her busy schedule to appear today on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. We wonder when New York’s own doubles act, Chancellor Joel Klein and Rev. Al Sharpton, will take their Education Equality Hour from web radio to the tv studio.

For staunch statisticians (and civic-minded parents), Eduwonkette digs deep into math “progress” today — with ELA on deck for tomorrow. Short take: Gaps in race-based scores, which we asked about here and here, could persist for decades, long after Klein, Sharpton, Spellings et al have folded their big tents and decamped from education leadership.

More money woes this week: city funding for pre-K programs run by community groups was cut in half, leading to the overnight evaporation of about 300 seats. Yet Obama accepted the endorsement of the national teachers union (AFT) union, vowing his commitment to “quality, affordable early childhood education for all our children,” and McCain announced his intention to fully fund No Child Left Behind, offer private school vouchers and put tutoring funds directly in the hands of parents. Ambitious plans on all sides, given the current economic climate.

Meanwhile, NYC education bigwigs are going national: Joel Klein is hoping to advise the next president and UFT President Randy Weingarten was elected head of the AFT. She says she’s staying in New York for now (and announcing fresh lawsuits on behalf of city teachers) but just might be grooming a successor. Klein, who claims accountability as his hallmark reform, might want to explain why it apparently took a newspaper article to stop the city school bus system from “losing” parent complaints.

Children’s health came under fresh scrutiny: A new report confirms what parents have known for eons — that America’s active kids morph into sedentary teenagers – and documents health risks that have led others to recommend cholesterol meds for kids. And each successive scandal that the Administration for Childrens Services (ACS) faces tragically impacts the city’s most vulnerable citizens.

Too many teens are stuck in middle school , according to a report released by Advocates for Children. While some kids in the Bronx are apathetic about keeping their neighborhood clean, juvenile offenders are helping restore and reopen classic American diners. And the Times celebrated high school theater geekdom at its best, which seems a lot more wholesome than the current crop of product-infused teen novels. But for now, ditch the screen, shut the book, and get out! It’s summer.

Here’s a paragraph from Chancellor Joel Klein’s testimony yesterday before the House panel on education; below it, some amplification on what the stats really mean, thanks to this handy PowerPoint from the DOE.

“In fourth-grade math, for example, the gap separating our African-American and white students has narrowed by more than 16 points. In eighth-grade math, African-American students have closed the gap with white students by almost 5 points. In fourth-grade reading, the gap between African-American and white students has narrowed by more than 6 points. In eighth-grade reading, the gap has closed by about 4 points.”

First, the good news: Overall, nearly 80% of fourth-graders score at or above grade level in math. That’s good. The race gap Klein highlights persists but is narrowing. Also good. But the 18-point split between black and white students leaps to 30 points by 8th grade, when math proficiency drops to 59% overall. So closing a gap by 5 points IS progress — but the gap that remains is six times as wide.

In English Language Arts (ELA), 26 points separate black and white fourth-grade students who score on or above grade level; the gap endures, at 29 points, in eighth grade. But the overall average score plummets in parallel with the math score — 61% score at or above grade level in fourth grade, but fewer than half, 43%, earn level 3/4 on their eighth grade ELA.

And two items worth the mention, although Klein elected to skip them: This year, grade 5 level 3/4 ELA scores were 69%; grade 6 level 3/4 scores plummeted to 53% — roughly, a 20% drop. What happened in that transitional year? And top scorers on the Level 4 ELAs represent a very small slice of the New York City pie: Only 5.8% of fourth graders and 2.9% of eighth graders scored Level 4 on these critical standardized exams.

Head spinning yet? The numbers sure are…

The DOE has set dates for a rapid second round of Contracts for Excellence (C4E) public hearings, where parents, community leaders and advocates can speak out on C4E funding, which by law must go to students with the greatest needs, particularly students living in poverty and English Language Learners (ELLs).

Chancellor Joel Klein’s initial push to persuade Albany to redirect portions of C4E money incensed advocacy groups, including the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which stresses that C4E funds are meant to support and not replace city spending. But since the forceful resolution of the 2008-09 schools budget, the $63 million once in question is now budgeted “entirely within the mandates” of the law, according to the DOE.

This second round will take up school-based plans for spending developed by principals and school leadership teams. DOE sources say revised proposals will post to the DOE website next week; we’ll let you know when the links are live, so you can see what’s on deck at your child’s school.

The second round is scheduled as follows:
* Staten Island on Tuesday, July 29
* Queens on Tuesday, July 29
* Bronx on Wednesday, July 30
* Brooklyn on Wednesday, July 30
* Manhattan on Wednesday, July 30

Got any questions? Let us know.

Quiet week in NYC? Head down to D.C.: Tomorrow morning, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein will address a House panel on progress in urban education, along with D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Klein protegee D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and public school leaders from Chicago and Atlanta.

We bet we’ll hear about test score gains and closing the achievement gap — but we doubt the conversation will include troubling nuances, like the fact that race-based gaps between brighter kids widen over time, even as they narrow for kids with lower skills. And we bet we won’t hear the nitty-gritty on why level 4 test scores have dropped for middle schoolers this year: Will anyone ask about the price bright students pay in a system so focused on raising low-level student skills?

We’ll likely hear about charter schools and merit pay, about leadership pipelines and increasing accountability. We’ll hear about rising grad rates — but bet the numbers they cite will be based on old data, as the newly calibrated scores are yet to be made public.

Will we learn anything new? We doubt it, but we’d love to be wrong. As it stands now, though, our bet is on celebration over substance, and photo-ops over hard questions.

Ten Harlem middle schools will get new math and science programs this fall, thanks to a $17.9 million, five-year grant from the General Electric Foundation, announced just this afternoon by a sun-drenched Mayor Bloomberg, flanked by CEO of GE Jeffrey Immelt, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and Harlem’s own Charlie Rangel, House Ways and Means Committee Chair and undisputed king of 125th Street.

The largest corporate grant ever awarded to city schools, the DOE money is the lion’s share of a $29-million package that directs GE funds to Teachers College, Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Childrens’ Zone, the Council for Opportunities in Education and College for Every Student, in that corporation’s ongoing effort to develop math, science and engineering talent. Klein said that participating public schools have yet to be identified, although a Teacher’s College press-release named PS 200 and PS/IS 180 as part of the program.

We don’t yet know how the money will be spent or the programs administered, but Klein did mention that a portion of the grant might be used to “reconfigure” middle schools (translation: break them up and make them smaller). The mayor and the chancellor have reminded us often over the past week that middle schools remain their biggest challenge for reform, and they heralded this latest cash flow as a boost to their invigorated efforts. We’re curious, however, why other parts of the city, with similarly acute needs for strong math and science education, aren’t part of the powerhouse’s largesse.

It was the last week of school, and the big story was the generally higher test scores, although the controversy continues over what the scores actually mean. Chancellor Klein was riding high on the test results, although the teachers slammed his performance in a UFT survey. New Orleans superintendent Paul Vallas, said to be short-listed for an eventual successor, says that New York students might say bye-bye to future summer vacations. Large middle schools are the first in line on the chopping block, however, as Klein suggests that he plans to slice and dice them into smaller schools (reported first here, on our blog). Maybe smaller schools will tone down the 8^th grade graduation frenzy. At best, they’ll avoid serious issues, like apparent negligence in one Brooklyn junior high school.

Another study confirms what what we already know: there is a woeful lack of playgrounds at New York elementary schools. Let’s hope the new grade school in midtown includes outdoor play space.

The Times ended the school year with a summer storm of local and national school stories: career programs seem to work; a segregated retention program is, unsurprisingly, controversial; a NYC Harbor-based high school builds confidence (see their profile for more); an immigrant parent program boosts involvement; and rent assistance keeps helps families in one place, and kids from switching schools. Whew.

The Times also cautions: summer means bad nutrition. Keep healthy and cool!

An ebullient Chancellor Klein quoted ol’ Blue Eyes this morning — “it was a very good year”– and lauded the praises of students at Bronx Lab High School (whose graduates he addressed) as well as the city’s teachers. Celebrating “the boldest changes yet” in terms of school reform, he cautioned nay-sayers, “Don’t call it experimentation. You never want to stop innovation — it’s what drives success.”

What Klein sees as success, though, can appear otherwise to other eyes. For example, he said “g+t program [admissions] ran much more smoothly than ever before”– an assertion with which we’d bet plenty of parents would differ. For middle school admissions, he prescribed a “do it earlier” timeframe and stronger communications, advice that would’ve been useful when so many parents seeking answers weren’t able to reach DOE and OSEPO officials.

The Chancellor celebrated gains by ELL students, as well as test-score gains overall. The 43% grade 8 ELA proficiency, while “not a great number,” still represents a gain over the 30% proficiency when Klein took charge of the city schools. Middle school “is our greatest challenge,” he said, and suggested that the DOE might consider breaking large middle schools into smaller ones, similar to ongoing high-school reforms.

Lower numbers of Level 4 scores, especially in middle school, are a concern, says Klein, who faults NCLB guidelines for not rewarding (and thus motivating) progress beyond proficiency. Recognition aside, he didn’t offer specific ideas on how to address or even understand lower achievement by high-performing students.

Asked about the 50- to 60-hour week many teachers invest in their jobs, Klein dismissed concerns about sustainability. “When people are part of the world of changing things for children, they don’t view it as work.” This may come as news to teachers, who work hard to meet and sometime surpass the expectations of their jobs. Surely, even the most idealistic deserve not to work steady 12- or 14-hour days.

Persistent declines in level 4 middle school ELA scores and other hallmarks of flagging achievement from the top tier of New York City’s students have prompted many commenters’ heartfelt concern about the untoward effects of a test-driven education culture.

The point’s not lost on academe — eduwonkette’s post today substantiates what we’ve heard and seen, as does this study. The flip side is, no matter how dogged, test-linked, or slow, real progress is being made among the lowest-performing sets of kids; many connect the NCLB dots to rising achievement.

If moving under-skilled kids forward is the prime educational target, as Chancellor Klein has asserted multiple times, what is the cost to the city’s most-skilled students? Why do these students show poorer test scores? And how can the “two steps forward, one back” pace change to one that moves everyone forward, struggling learners and motivated, prepared, and ambitious kids alike?

G+T and other specialized, enriched programs are only part of the answer. Legions of kids just don’t ace the tests, and others aren’t offered the opportunity. The challenge, we worry, will outlast the Bloomberg era: While seeking to meet the needs of the least able, how can the city better support its top learners?

The kids who are middle- and high-school students today will quickly become the voters that define the city’s agenda. How can we best serve them to learn, and to lead, tomorrow?

The Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) passed the executive budget last night. Only one member, Manhattan representative Patrick Sullivan, voted nay. Sullivan said he was concerned that more resources were devoted to testing and charter schools while the bread-and-butter, general education classes that serve the majority of students would suffer from the cuts. Of course considering the mayor appoints 8 of the members of the panel (the 5 others are appointed by the borough presidents), it is not surprising that they passed his budget - especially in light of the mayor’s history of firing members who don’t agree with his decisions.

The meeting was scantily attended, despite the uproar over the budget cuts over the past few weeks, and many of the public comments had nothing to do with the budget vote. Meanwhile, one uninvited participant - a small brown mouse - darted around the audiences’ feet at the MLK High School Complex auditorium. Chancellor Klein, who looked exhausted, sounded relieved to close the session and the monthly PEP meetings for the school year.