After nine hours of parent, teacher, and politician testimony at a boisterous meeting at Brooklyn Tech last night, the Panel for Educational Policy rubber-stamped the decision to close 19 city schools.

Impassioned pleas to save neighborhood’s schools came from the far-reaches of all boroughs — Far Rockaway, Queens, the Northeast Bronx, Bed Stuy, Brooklyn and midtown Manhattan. Parents from PS 16 on Staten Island were there to protest the plan to split their school in half.

For the first time since Mayor Bloomberg took control of the city’s schools, parents — some 2000 strong — came together in a bid to keep their schools open. However, given that the PEP has previously approved all school closings, the schools’ fate appeared to be decided even before the meeting began.

The minimal checks and balances on mayoral control that were put into place by the state legislature last summer, were not enough to offset the mayor’s ironclad grip of the schools. Of the 13 members on the oversight board — the PEP — eight are appointed by the mayor and serve at his pleasure. (more…)

NY1 education reporter Lindsey Christ this  week is chronicling the sad story of Paul Robeson High School, one of 20 schools  slated for closure by the Department of Education. The reporter first visited Paul Robeson for Insideschools.org  last year. At that time she found that “high absenteeism, occasional violence, low graduation rates, and poor test scores” were plaguing the school, one of a dwindling number of  large comprehensive high schools left in Brooklyn.

In Tuesday’s report for NY1, Christ visited empty classrooms and talked to teachers about the attendance problem at Robeson — only 69% of students show up for school on a given day, sometimes as few as five are in a classroom.  In  Monday’s story,  students blamed themselves, as well as the school, for their lackluster performance.

The series about Robeson is a prelude to next week’s meeting of the  Panel for Educational Policy, where school closings will be voted on. Hearings continue this week, offering parents and community members the opportunity to speak out about the proposed changes.

Check out the coverage on NY1 for a look at what’s happening inside one large high school.  Meanwhile, the debate continues about how well small schools, which are increasingly replacing neighborhood high schools, serve the most troubled students, such as those skipping classes at Paul Robeson.

The Department of Education is “discharging” an increasing number of students, who are not counted in the graduation rates but may have dropped out of school, according to report released today by the Public Advocate’s office. Up to and above a quarter of all children of color and with special needs, including students who are English language learners, are documented as high-school discharges, as are 21 percent of students overall. That works out to one in five students who start high school and then are ostensibly ‘discharged’ to other schools or other locations, with little precision or transparency on causes and outcomes. These numbers are on the rise since a seminal report in 2002.

The Times offers a cogent analysis; internet education wonks will recognize one of the report’s authors, Jennifer Jennings, as the “unmasked” Eduwonkette, whose anonymous columns, supported by careful, meticulous research, challenged the DOE on a regular basis.

One particularly troubling observation documented in the report is the high discharge rate for students in the first year of high school — before they’re 17, the legal age at which students may elect to end their public education and drop out. It is unclear what this surge represents, but the report charges that younger, struggling students are being pushed out of high schools that are trying to improve Progress Report grades. Without these students being counted, school statistics may increase, which offers schools “perverse incentives to discharge students,” according to the report. Regardless, what is crystalline is that far too many kids are unaccounted for, and that graduation rate calculation and reporting is undoubtedly influenced by this practice.

It can’t be pure coincidence that the DOE released a report highlighting gains made by English language learners less than a week after a boisterous mayoral-control hearing in the Bronx. And even though the report cites gains — three times as many students tested as English-proficient in 2008 than in 2003 — the actual percentages are still discouragingly low: In 2008, 13 percent of English language learners (ELLs) demonstrated proficiency, compared with 4 percent in 2003.

Language learners show test-score gains in fourth and eighth grade math as well, according to the DOE’s report (link here to pdf). But the Department of Education omits a key summary from the report in its good-news press release: “Elementary English language learners continue to make larger gains than middle school English language learners… The less dramatic gains by middle school ELLs, relatively flat Regents scores, and flat graduation rates (31.6% in 2003 and 30.8% in 2007) underscore the immediate demand for deeper, more focused attention.” In plain language, younger kids are doing better, as is often the case in language acquisition — and results for older kids aren’t nearly as encouraging.

In today’s Times, Javier Hernandez sets the counterpoint between DOE and education and immigrant advocates. He said that Angela M. Infante, deputy director of the DOE’s Office of ELL, suggested that “grim graduation rates were not the best metric on which to judge the city’s efforts.” But if not graduation rates, then what? The administration has repeatedly cited its obligation and desire to increase the high-school graduation rate and prepare students for post-secondary education and training. Either the buck stops at the graduation rate or it doesn’t.

High-school age language-learners represent 69% of new immigrants to the city schools. With one in four public school pupils born overseas, according to the DOE’s Deputy Chancellor Marcia Lyles, it’s hard to overstate the importance of educating kids born overseas. And with a 26 percent graduation rate, and a Regents diploma graduation rate of about 10 percent, the issue is not likely to fade from the public conversation anytime soon.

Yesterday, the New York State Education Department released its 2009 list of Schools Under Registration Review — institutions that, based on test-measured, annual yearly progress (AYP) criteria, risk potential closure. No school wants to be a SURR school and the city is to be commended for reducing its share of the SURR list by about two-thirds since the early days of mayoral control. (Cynics might look at the DOE’s penchant for closing struggling schools as a pre-SURR ambush strategy. In fact, three schools that would have been placed on the state’s watch list are being closed now by the city, effectively removing them from the state’s roll of deeply troubled schools.) Four city schools were added to the SURR list; each serve high-need students predominantly from African-American and Hispanic communities.

Elissa Gootman notes in the Times that two of the schools new to the state’s list are, in fact, young schools created as part of the DOE’s small-schools initiative: The New Explorers High School in the Bronx and the West Bronx Academy for the Future.

The state’s actions are tied to No Child Left Behind mandates, which require AYP in particular categories. The city uses different measures — both of the schools above got passing grades, a B and a C, on their current progress reports. The variations on the ‘progress’ theme reflect a frequent disconnect between city and state counters of things that matter: The state counts high-school credits differently than the city, for example, and for years, the state and the city calibrated the high-school graduation rate using different metrics. (That particular gap was addressed this year; the DOE now uses the state’s calculation method and its’ own, for — no kidding — two sets of numbers.)

In broad strokes, that there are fewer city schools on the state’s watch list is very good news. But this year’s SURR list prompts a few questions that could become more persistent as the 200+ Bloomberg-Klein small schools mature: Should the results of isolated metrics determine a school’s fate? And what does a school’s place on the watch list mean to the kids, teachers and administrators who are the human fabric of the school’s community? Does SURR status translate to “we’re looking out for your best interests” or “we’re giving up on this school — and, by extension, giving up on you” ?

A worried, back-to-the-1970s fatalism seems the mode du jour: ACS may fall deeper into debt or lose funding, doubts about funding for class-size reduction, and a bleak overall analysis that predicts regression over progress in city schools fill the daily papers.

Against this black canvas, the DOE announced yesterday $7 million for new programs for English language learners — 148,000 students citywide who, in addition to learning math, science and literature, have to (eventually) master English as well. Grants of up to $100,000 will be distributed to 110 city schools; funders include the DOE, the New York City Council, the UFT, and the New York Immigration Coalition Task Force.

All city schools are mandated to support students learning the language, although in practice, efforts vary widely, and outcomes are mixed . Overall, nearly as many ELL students drop out of high school as graduate — 28.9% vs. 30.8%, in 2007 — while former ELL students graduate at rates higher than citywide averages — 70.9% in 2007, vs. 60% citywide — and far fewer, less than 10%, drop out.

It may be just a tiny glimmer, but it’s a welcome glint of hope, just the same.

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.

As the markets continue to slide and tumble, the City Council takes up the issue of education budget cuts in hearings today. See Gotham Schools’ preview here, or go downtown and watch the wheels of urban democracy grind for yourself — always sobering, from time to time, to see how the sausage gets made.

Two stories today highlight college costs — one, on early admission, says applicants are more blithe than bothered (despite a strong focus on elite, high-tuition private schools), and the other anticipates a double-digit tuition increase in Florida.

Worth remembering: For all the focus on faraway, fancy colleges and tuitions that outstrip the 2008 Department of Health and Human Services poverty-guidelines income for a family of eight, more than half of all New York City high school graduates go on to attend CUNY two- and four-year colleges, according to former CUNY Dean and Teachers Academy head John Garvey. Of those students, 30% require remediation in reading, and twice as many — 60% — require math help as well. “They’re not ready to begin college-level work,” said Garvey. “The consequences are fairly disastrous.”

What does that particular disaster look like? According to Garvey, only 2.1% of students graduate from two-year, A.A. CUNY programs on time. After three years, 10% have graduated; after six, 26% have earned the A.A. credential. At the four-year schools, grad rates are somewhat higher: 50% of students graduate with a B.A. or B.S. within six years.

It’s great to aim high and reach for the academic stratosphere, but higher-ed coverage too often skews to the sky, forgetting the thousands here on the ground, in our city, under-prepared and failing out of college.

In a climate where standardized tests are praised and vilified, depending on your point of view, comes a study from the State University of New York, showing a strong correlation between SAT score and eventual college graduation. Also notable is the graduation rate itself: At some schools, just over half of enrolled students completed their undergraduate degrees, even with grad-rate rises linked with more rigorous admissions policies. By raising the SAT bar, SUNY Stony Brook documented a grad-rate climb from 53.8 to 59.2 percent; at the regional college in Old Westbury, the grad rate nearly doubled — from 18.4 to 35.9 percent — when SAT requirements were raised, yet nearly two out of three students left school without a sheepskin. What happened to all the students who fell out of school along the wayside? The piece in today’s Times doesn’t ask or answer that question — but it’s a safe bet that it’s the source of some serious soul-searching among the State Regents, parents, college admissions counselors, and educators state- and citywide.

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.

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. 

Interesting to see how the grad-rate report is presented by local media. Facts are facts, but how they’re spun reflects how they’re seen.

For starters, the Post notes the upward trend – but sets the NYC data against even greater apparent progress in long-troubled cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. The Sun describes “an uptick” in state and city scores (and a brief moment of mayoral pique), while the Daily News, incredibly, says “the gap between black and white students closed” — somehow overlooking the 21 percentage points that separate both groups’ graduation rates. The Times’ headlines the on-time graduation of “most” city students, for the biggest “hunh?” moment of the morning’s news. No argument, 52% is more — but most? Could a student who scored a 52 on a 100-point exam celebrate getting “most” of the questions right? (Would you accept that, as a parent? The DOE doesn’t think twice about calling a 52 a failure on a Regents exam.)

The mind reels, as do the perceptions of readers, decision-makers, and parents citywide.

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.

Just over two weeks ago, we asked – and not for the first time — about high-school graduation rates and school report cards. (The Times asked, too, but didn’t get a clear answer.) The New York State Department of Education said in May that they would release the data by the end of June; nothing doing. In July, they said the data would post by the end of July. It’s the 30th. Anyone here think we’re going into August without knowing how schools did, and whether more kids are graduating than in years previous?

School report cards help parents (and professionals, like principals and teachers) learn more about schools by reporting detailed (”granular”) data on enrollment, testing, teacher qualifications and more. The grad rate is the education acid test — how many kids finish high school is a pretty effective yardstick, and the one against which Bloomberg and Klein measure their success.

The city and state disagreed for years on how to define and count high-school grads. This year, they’ve reached agreement on who qualifies as a graduate (excluding GED completers, for example). High schools rise and fall on grad rates and other accountability data; don’t parents — the taxpayers who support the schools — deserve timely reporting on how the city’s students are doing? The state and the city’s DOE owe the accountability they cite as a foundation of responsible, progressive school reform to the people who pay their salaries.

Over two weeks ago, we asked about delays in reporting the high-school graduation rate; why, we wondered, were school report cards and other data MIA at the end of the school year?

Today, Elissa Gootman’s Times piece explores the question at length — but guess what? There’s no clear answer. Blame falls on pricey, whiz-bang data systems and on faulty reporting; fingers are wagged in many directions. But still, no data.

In an email earlier this month, Tom Dunn of the New York State Education Department said the report cards would probably post by late July. Well, we’re halfway there. We’re glad for the Times’ muscle on this question, and hope that we’ll know the grad rate before this year’s rising seniors show up for school in September.

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.

After spending much of last week thinking at gifted and talented programs, I thought it was time to turn my attention to kids for whom academic achievement doesn’t come so easily. The Daily News helped this weekend by taking an on-the-ground look at the new 8th grade promotion policy. Although the policies in grades 3, 5, and 7 are supposed to protect against this, sometimes kids in those grades pass all of their classes and one of the state tests but just can’t pass the other, the article says. “I’m getting left back for one subject,” says a second-year 7th grader in the article. “I was doing my homework and stuff. I just didn’t get math.” Will the safeguards in the 8th grade promotion policy be enough to prevent students from being held over unnecessarily — or for the third time?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advocates for Children got a shout out in the Times today in an article about how school districts nationwide are beginning to recognize that many students need more than four years to graduate from high school. New York is on the vanguard of cities studying dropouts and providing alternatives for students who have not been successful in traditional high schools. From the article:

The push for alternatives came in part because of a lawsuit from a nonprofit group, Advocates for Children, which charged that many lagging students were being pushed out of school against their will. The suit was settled, and schools now conduct ‘exit interviews’ with students who want to leave the system and suggest alternatives.

Although the DOE would like to see kids graduate on time, it makes sense that some would need to take longer, given the fact that only about a third start high school performing on grade level in reading and math.

In Ben’s last post, he took a look at merit pay for teachers. Now, New York City is going to pioneer offering merit pay for students — offering kids cash prizes for academic achievement.

Last week, when the first rumors of the mayor’s plan to introduce monetary “incentives” for strong school performance hit the newspapers, I hoped they would prove to be just rumors. But today the city announced a pilot version of the incentive program, in which families will receive cold, hard cash for getting kids to school, showing up at parent-teacher conferences, and applying for a library card. At the high school level, it looks like the money will go straight to teenagers who take the PSAT and Regents exams and who make progress toward graduating. The incentive schedule includes a $400 graduation bonus.

This program is just one of three privately funded initiatives that make up what the city is calling “Opportunity NYC” and billing as “the nation’s first conditional cash transfer program.” In addition to paying for school performance, Opportunity NYC includes financial incentives for adults who maintain health insurance and who hold down a job or enroll in a job training program. All of the programs will be launched this fall on a pilot basis — the education program will be open only to families living in one of six neighborhoods whose income is below 130 percent of the poverty level and who have at least one child in grade 4, 7, or 9. Schools can also volunteer to participate in a trial of a program that will pay students for high scores on the interim assessments that all schools are supposed to give next year.

These programs represent a major achievement for Roland Fryer, the Harvard economics professor who has spent his career (short so far; he is just 30 years old) investigating whether incentives can convince people to change their environment. A fascinating 2005 New York Times Magazine cover story about Fryer suggested that DOE officials were already interested in his plan, but that he was having a hard time selling it to principals, who worried that paying kids for test scores would send the message that learning itself is an insufficient incentive. Last month, Fryer pitched his plan in a letter to principals of empowerment schools. I’m curious what has changed to get principals on board now.

While I’m always eager to hear about innovative strategies to motivate students and their families, the notion of exchanging cash for school performance just doesn’t sit right with me. I wonder whether the incentives are large enough to persuade people to improve their behavior, or whether some families will just be rewarded for what they are already doing well. I also wonder, as others have, whether cash incentives will make tests even more stressful for kids than they already are. These are probably questions that Roland Fryer is eager to answer — I just wish it weren’t the city’s kids and their families who have to be his test subjects.